Tips For Making a Perfect Fruit Salad

Searching for the perfect side dish to accompany your summer meal? Look no further than fruit salad – it’s simple to put together, healthy, refreshing and ever so flavorful. While a fruit salad seems pretty basic, there are a few things you can do to ensure it turns out flawlessly.

Use fruits in season
The way to get a flavorful and satisfying fruit salad is to only choose produce that’s in season. While apples are best in autumn, pears, peaches, pineapples, watermelon, cantaloupe, mangoes, kiwis, strawberries and blueberries are best during the summer months.

Wait till the last minute
While it may be convenient to cut up the fruit for your salad the day before your summer get-together, the dish won’t taste as fresh this way. Plus, the fruits may blend together in both color and taste, giving your salad an unusual flavor. Instead, you’ll want to prepare it at the last minute where each fruit will have a distinct flavor.

Remove seeds, pits and skin
The beauty of a fruit salad is that you don’t have to worry about peeling off the skin of a peach or biting into a cherry to find the pit in the middle. Make sure that you’re peeling the fruit and removing any stems before throwing the fruit into your salad. Always purchase seedless produce when available. If you can’t get the seedless variety, do your best to remove the seeds beforehand.

Pay attention to ripeness
Your peaches may be at the perfect consistency, but are your strawberries at that same level? You want to put together fruits that are at an even level of ripeness. This way, you won’t have one bite with fruits that are soft, and others that are crunchy. You want a constant texture throughout.

Choose striking colors
A fruit salad should be just as visually pleasing as it is tasty. Combine fruits with contrasting colors like kiwis and strawberries, and peaches and blackberries for a striking side salad. Most often, those various colors also have different textures that mesh together beautifully for a myriad of flavors. Taking a fruit course online can help you figure out which fruits go best together.

Balance out the ingredients
Instead of simply cutting up each fruit and putting it in the salad bowl, make sure to evenly divide up the fruit. You don’t want too much of one fruit dominating the flavor of the entire dish. Cut uniform slices of each fruit and use equal parts throughout.