This Easy Fruit Salad 🍓🍊🫐🥝 recipe is everyone’s favorite! Fresh fruit is tossed in a light dressing made with orange juice, honey, and lime juice for the perfect balance of citrus meets sweet and tangy. Works with most any fruit and can be assembled the night before your next picnic, potluck, party, or event!
Easy Fruit Salad Recipe
- This fruit salad recipe is just the best and it’s always the first thing to disappear off a buffet table or at events. People just can’t resist all that pretty fruit tossed in a light and bright honey lime dressing.
- The dressing has citrus juices for a bit of tanginess and the honey adds a touch of sweetness and it’s very well balanced. It coats all the fruit perfectly.
- At your next summer event or holiday – Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, or for Mother’s Day brunch, a Father’s Day celebration, graduation parties, baby or bridal showers, this is such a winner of a side dish with kids and adults alike.
- And it’s so easy to prepare! You can also prep it the night before your event to save time if you’ll be pressed for time that day. It’s naturally gluten-free and vegetarian as well.
Fruit Salad Ingredients with Fruit Salad Dressing
Fruit Salad Tips
Fresh fruit is you want to use. While you could in theory use frozen fruit, we all know that eating previously frozen fruit can be a mushy, water-logged experience. Save the frozen berries for blueberry pie bars or strawberry muffins.
You can mix-and-match fruit, to a degree. I used a variety of fruits that are typical, common, and that hold up well to time, and to being tossed around.
What Fruits Not to Use: Fruits like bananas or pears which oxidize and are very soft are not a win. Watermelon and cantaloupe are also not great choice because their high water content releases into the salad and can sog down the rest of the salad and make it soupy. Apples are fine, noting the citrus in the dressing will prevent oxidizing. Stone fruits such as plums are fine, whereas peaches and nectarines – use your judgement since they’re soft, delicate, and oxidize. Cherries are great but require pitting and halving, which is a pain and messy.
To peel or not peel. A personal decision on things like kiwi, or if you’re swapping in some apples, it’s up to you.
Fruit I wish I could use… mango. But it’s tropical and in the US I find it’s a bad combo of mushy, stringy, or hard – all in one! If you have access to good mango, use it because it holds up well.
Dressing: Orange juice, honey, and lime juice. Use freshly squeezed if you have it. For more citrus oomph, use orange zest and/or lime zest in addition to the juice. Lemon juice is fine instead of lime juice. If you want to swap the honey out for agave nectar, that’s fine. I personally would not use maple syrup for the flavor.
Berries: Strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries are what I use. I don’t recommend raspberries as much because they’re very soft and will break easier but if you happen to have them, toss them in – I just wouldn’t go out of my way to purchase them because they’re expensive. Kiwi is also considered a berry, your fun factoid of the day.
Citrus: Fresh pineapple is so wonderful in this salad and I don’t recommend canned pineapple. I also use fresh mini mandarin oranges (Cuties). If you prefer, you can use tangerine segments or even canned mandarin oranges, making sure to watch the syrup/sugar and opt for something lighter because many of them are packed in extremely sweet syrup.
Grapes: Seedless grapes are the only way to go here. Either green or red are fine. If they’re very large, you can halve them. Or not. People have teeth, I don’t think we still need to be halving grapes in general; it feels very 1950s but I digress.
Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts included and for more complete directions.
How To Make the Best Fruit Salad
- In a small bowl or glass measuring cups, whisk together the dressing ingredients.
- If you care about make a trifle or layering this fruit salad in rainbow order, then to a large trifle bowl, add the red strawberries, and move through the violet blackberries, working through all the colors of the rainbow in ROYGBIV order (red orange yellow green blue indigo violet). If you don’t care, then just toss all the cut fruit in a large mixing bowl.
- Evenly pour the dressing over the top, noting it will seep down, so you don’t have to toss if you want to preserve the rainbow order.
- Cover with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes, or up to 8-12 hours, before serving.
Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for step-by-step photos and process shots of the cooking process.
Easy Fruit Salad
Equipment
Ingredients
Dressing
- ½ cup orange juice, freshly squeezed if possible
- ¼ cup honey
- 2 tablespoons lime juice, freshly squeezed if possible
Fruit
- 1 pound strawberries, hulled and sliced thick
- 1 ½ pounds fresh mandarin oranges, about 6-8, peeled and segmented (or sub with a 23.5-ounce can of canned mandarin oranges, heavy syrup rinsed if desired, and drained well)
- 2 cups fresh pineapple, peeled, cored, and diced into bite size pieces (I strongly prefer fresh pineapple; if you had to use canned pineapple chunks packed in juice and well drained, it’s an option)
- 6 kiwi, peeled and diced into bite-sized pieces
- ¾ pound green seedless grapes, halved if desired (red seedless grapes may be substituted)
- 2 cups fresh blueberries, 1 pint
- 2 cups fresh blackberries, 1 pint
Instructions
- Dressing: To a small bowl or 2-cup glass measuring cup, add all ingredients, whisk to combine, taste, and if you think it needs more juice or more honey, add to taste. Set aside momentarily.
- Fruit and Assembly: If you want to preserve the rainbow order of this fruit salad, we're going to work in ROYGBIV order (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet), adding in color coded layers.Tip – If you don't care about the rainbow effect, or you don't have a large glass trifle bowl or large glass bowl, then add everything to a large bowl as you get it washed and chopped.
- Start by adding the strawberries in an even layer. Tip: Since the strawberries form the bottom layer, they will be supporting the weight of the other fruits. To prevent them from becoming overly soft, use firm, just-ripe strawberries and slice them thickly.
- Add the mandarin oranges in an even layer.
- Add the pineapple in an even layer.
- Add the kiwi in an even layer.
- Add the grapes in an even layer.
- Add the blueberries in an even layer.
- Add the blackberries in an even layer.
- Evenly drizzle the dressing over the top, noting it will seep down through the layers so you don't have to toss and 'mess it all up'. If you're using a mixing bowl and don't care, add the dressing, and give everything a gentle toss to evenly distribute.
- Cover and Chill: Cover tightly with plastic wrap, and chill for at least 30 minutes prior to serving, or up to 8-12 hours in advance if you're making it ahead of time. Tip: While you technically don't have to chill it, if you're serving this at an outdoor spring or summer event on a warm day, chilled fruit is nice (and won't stay too 'chilled' for all that long). Serve: Serve as desired on plates or in bowls.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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