How to make 'Tropical Fruit Salad'

Fresh pineapple is a staple ingredient for tropical fruit salad.

Tropical fruit salad is a cool, refreshing and healthy addition to any summer meal or picnic with family and friends. You can serve it as a light side dish or else as a dessert with a little sweetened whipped cream on the side. Tropical fruit salad is typically a mixture of chopped and peeled fruits that are tossed together. Sometimes the chopped fruits are combined with nuts, flavorings and dressings for a tropical fruit salad that has a more sophisticated blend of flavors.

Things You'll Need

• Varied selection of fruits
• Water
• Dish towels or paper towels
• Potato peeler
• Sharp knife
• Cutting board
• Large bowl
• Wooden spoon
• Nuts
• Flavoring
• Dressing
• Ming sprigs
• Individual serving bowls
• Spoons

Instructions

1. Choose which fruits to include in the tropical fruit salad. Common tropical fruit salad ingredients include bananas, oranges, pineapples, mangoes, satsumas and kiwi. Also, fruits such as breadfruit, date, fig, grapefruit, guava, feijoa, jackfruit, kumquat or papaya can make delicious additions.

2. Wash all of the fruit. Pat the fruit dry with clean dish towels or new paper towels. Peel the skins off the orange, banana and mandarin orange with your hands. Peel the skins off the mango, peach, kiwi and apple with a potato peeler over a cutting board. With the knife, cut all the outside parts off the pineapple to expose the yellow flesh below. Chop all of the fruits you are using into cube shaped pieces of approximately the same size. Lightly toss all the fruit pieces together with a wooden spoon.

3. Add texture to the tropical fruit salad in the form of some sliced almonds or sliced macadamia nuts.

4. Add a flavoring such as a handful of dried and sweetened coconut or a dusting of ground cinnamon. Lightly toss the tropical fruit salad.

5. Add a dressing of lemon juice, plain yogurt or honey.

6. Garnish the fruit salad bowl or the tropical fruit salad apportioned into individual serving bowls with sprigs of mint.

Tips & Warnings

• For a tropical fruit dessert salad, add sweetened whipped cream on the side or mix in some plain mini marshmallows.

• Pair the tropical fruit salad with some mint lemonade or strawberry lemonade for a kid-centered party. For an adult event, pair the salad with some limoncello, a lemon liqueur from Italy; piña colada cocktails,or mojitos.

References

• Jamie Oliver: Tropical Fruit Salad
• Martha Stewart: Tropical Fruit Salad
• Drinks Mixer: Pina Colada Recipe