Red Fruit Salad

While you can pick up a carton of fruit salad at any grocery store, the best fruit salad is one that you make at home. And, for this red fruit salad, you'll focus on the fruit that everyone seems to love: fresh berries and cherries, and forgo all the rest.

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What is it?

As its name implies, this fresh fruit salad is made entirely with red fruit. It can include plums, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, currants, and other red fruit. These ingredients are often people's favorite fruits, so the salad's always a win - especially when you're feeding guests.

It's a sweet, fresh summer dish that you can serve as both a side dish and a dessert, and it works especially well for potlucks, summer picnics, and Fourth of July barbecues.

What's in it?

A good fruit salad needs a few key ingredients: fruit, acid, and a sweetener. In addition to these key three ingredients, you'll benefit from adding herbs and spices to enhance the flavor of the fruit and chopped nuts, flaked coconut, or another similar ingredient that can give it texture and crunch.

In this red fruit salad, you'll find cherries and berries, toasted almonds, and a vanilla simple syrup.

• Red fruit or "fruits rouges" may refer specifically to berries (especially red berries) in French, feel free to use any red fruit you happen to like. Strawberries and raspberries are a natural choice, but so are cherries, loganberries, red plums, and red-fleshed black plums as well as pomegranate seeds, and black or red grapes.
• Vanilla bean syrup is the source of sweetener. It has a sweet, floral note that marries well with both cherries and berries. You can also use a combination of honey and vanilla extract, too. Or another sweetener that you prefer.
• Red wine vinegar may seem like a curious addition, but most fruit salads need a bit of acid to liven them up and pull all the fruits' flavors together. Lemon or lime juice is a natural choice, but red wine vinegar has acidity as well as a fruity flavor that complements red fruit.
• Toasted almonds bring a bit of crunch to the salad, and a pleasant flavor.

Fruit Salad Tips

Fruit salads are, above all else flexible and easy recipe to make. And this red fruit salad is no exception. As long as you can chop and stir, you can make it, but there are a few tips you'll want to keep in mind.

• Chop your fruit into bite-sized pieces of relatively uniform size. Inconsistently sized pieces can make the salad difficult to serve and difficult to eat.
• Your fruit should be uniformly ripe. Unripe fruit can change the texture and flavor of the salad, so make sure everything you add to your bowl is at the peak of ripeness.
• Add a sweetener, because it helps bring balance to your fruit salad. In this recipe, we use vanilla bean simple syrup, but honey is also a popular choice.
• Cool the vanilla bean simple syrup to room temperature, or it will cook your fruit and cause it to wilt.
• Avoid watermelon. While watermelon is a type of red fruit, it contains a lot of water, which can make your fruit salad weep and collect a significant amount of liquid in the bottom of the pan. We skip it, but if you want to add some, serve the salad right away and don't plan to keep any leftovers.
• Your salad needs a bit of acid, and this can come from citrus juice, but I like to add a little red wine vinegar because its sourness has notes of red fruit, like grapes, and it brings more to the table than lemon juice alone.
• Make the salad yours by adding different red fruit (such as currants or red plums), adjusting the sweetener, or adding herbs and spices that you enjoy. A cardamom-coriander simple syrup works just as well as one made with vanilla.

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Recipe Questions

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