This Healthy Fruit Salad with honey lemon dressing deserves a spot front and center at any breakfast or brunch. Enjoy the perfect combination of classic tastes, textures, and colors in this sweet, zesty fruit salad!
Complete your brunch menu with crustless zucchini quiche, healthy egg casserole and one of these healthy muffin recipes!
A beautiful vibrant healthy fruit salad is the best way to celebrate warmer weather and sunshine! It’s also an easy way to incorporate more seasonal fruit into our days giving us plenty of immune-boosting nutrients!
There is no added sugar as the tasty honey lemon dressing helps to bring out the naturally sweet juices. It’s fresher than any store bought fruit salad and so much healthier.
A delicious and healthy fruit salad recipe is great for summer barbecues and light lunches on the patio. It’s a special treat for Mother’s Day, and birthday parties, and it makes a great healthy snack for the kids.
Pair it with a scoop of coconut mango ice cream or a healthy strawberry smoothie for smiles all around!
It’s great for serving a crowd with healthy french toast casserole and is easily portable for road trips, and potlucks! So, double or triple the recipe if needed. Is there anything a delicious fruit salad can’t do?!
It’s so simple to make at home and flexible enough to customize it to whatever is in season, whatever’s in your fridge, or whatever’s in your budget.
My family loves to see a bowl of fresh fruit salad on the breakfast table. It usually means it’s accompanied by other healthy recipes like a stack of almond flour pancakes or healthy waffle recipe!
Healthy Fruit Salad Ingredients
Pick an array of satisfying colors, tastes, and textures. This is exactly what they mean when they say eat the rainbow!
- Sliced strawberries: Readily available in summer. Look for plump, ripe, and blemish-free strawberries and remove the calyx. That’s the green leafy part!
- Cubed pineapple: A sweet tropical fruit that when smelled should smell like a pineapple! Pick one that is firm and cut it yourself to save some money.
- Diced mango: One of my faves! I usually keep some aside to freeze and use them in a green smoothie later on.
- Sliced kiwis: Kiwis should only have a bit of give when pressed gently. If they’re too soft, they’re on their way out.
- Grapes: I used red, but you can use green if you like. Seedless will make your life much easier! Keep them whole or slice them, whatever you prefer.
- Mandarin segments: Loaded with vitamin C just like oranges, however, these guys are easy fruit to peel! I love to use these year round including in winter fruit salad like massaged kale salad!
- Blueberries: High in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties. Make sure to properly wash them and get rid of any debris or stems.
- Raspberries: Providing fiber and vitamins, raspberries add a beautiful pop of red! Discard any mushy berries!
For the fruit salad dressing: Enhance the flavor of this fruit salad with a sweet and zesty combination of fresh lemon juice, lemon zest, and honey. Honey lime with lime zest is also terrific!
How to Make Healthy Fruit Salad
- Prep, peel and slice fruit: Wash fruit with cold water and drainwell. Peel the kiwi, pineapple, mango, and mandarins and slice them into bite sized pieces. Place everything in a large mixing bowl or serving bowl.
- Whisk together dressing: In a small bowl, whisk together the lemon zest, lemon juice, and honey.
- Gently toss the healthy fruit salad: Drizzle the dressing overtop all of the mixed fruit and give everything a good toss. If you’re feeling fancy, garnish with some mint leaves and some extra lemon zest. Enjoy!
Feel free to let it sit! Giving it a chance to sit with the dressing for no more than an hour can help to extract the sweetness and combine flavors even more!
Tips for the Best Salad
- It’s important to wash all your fruit, whether it’s organic or not. Wash with cold water just before slicing to keep it fresher longer.
- It’s just as important to allow it to dry too! Too much extra water will soften your fruit too fast. Just drain well or pat dry with kitchen towel.
- Pick the best fruit at just the right ripeness. This way each spoonful of fruit will be juicy, sweet, and flavorful.Â
- You’ll notice I don’t add bananas or apples to mine. This is because they brown too quickly. Sure, the lemon helps a bit, but when serving a crowd, it’s still not the greatest. If you want to add them in, do so just before serving.
- To ripen fruit like mangos or kiwis quickly, place them in a brown paper bag and keep it on the counter for a couple of days.Â
- If you have some fruit that’s not quite ripe enough and some that are ripe enough, you can keep the ripe fruit in the fridge to slow down the process while you wait for the other fruit to catch up.
Can I Use Frozen Fruit?
No, I don’t recommend it. Frozen fruit has too much water in it which will thaw and become super mushy.
Can I Make It In Advance?
You can and you should for a healthy breakfast idea! Prepare all your fruits and place them in the bowl up to a few days ahead. Cover it and keep it in the fridge. Combine and toss with the dressing just before serving.
You can also prepare and assemble the whole salad up to 24 hours ahead. Keep in mind, that the dressing will have started to break down the fruit juices, so it won’t be as crispy and fresh, but will still be juicy, sweet, and delicious!
What Can I Do with Leftovers?
If you’ve got any leftover fruit, my kids love fruit skewers! Stick some pineapple chunks and strawberries on a skewer and eat it right off the stick! Grilling them would add a little something extra!
Use any leftover healthy fruit salad and toss it with some leafy greens to make a fruit and veggie salad. Serve on the side of grilled chicken breast for dinner then use some as a topping for a summer dessert of vegan vanilla ice cream afterward!
In the morning it’s great with these healthy blueberry muffins or on top of vanilla chia pudding. I enjoy it as a refreshing finish to spaghetti squash breakfast with avocado and egg.
Transform dressing into a honey lemon poppy seed dressing and use on any of these healthy salad recipes. Or use it to make healthy homemade popsicles!
FAQs
To save you a bit of time, by all means. Pre-sliced or diced fruit works too. Avoid anything that comes in a heavy syrup loaded with sugar, but canned or jarred fruit on its own is super convenient.
Fruit that doesn’t need to be refrigerated like pineapples is great because the taste and quality won’t suffer.
A squirt of citrus, whether it’s the lemon in the dressing or lemon juice on its own. The acid helps to slow down the chemical process that makes it turn brown. You also want to cover it to not expose it to oxygen for too long.
The rule of thumb is to serve about 4 ounces of fruit salad per person. You can easily double the recipe for a larger crowd, or larger appetites if needed.
Fruit salads are always great with Instant Pot yogurt or Instant Pot steel cut oats. The cool refreshing fruit on top of a warm bowl of oatmeal is amazing.
Serve with some healthy granola and don’t miss using it as a side salad with all your picnic barbecue favorites!
I love serving this for a spring brunch along with healthy lemon poppy seed bread!
How to Store
Store any leftover fruit salad for up to 3 days in the fridge. I doubt you’ll have any left, but you never know. 😉
More Healthy Fruit Recipes
- Healthy blueberry breakfast cake
- Strawberry muffins
- Strawberry yogurt
- Strawberry mango salsa
- Dole whip recipe
- Healthy apple bread
- Strawberry spinach salad
Healthy Fruit Salad with Honey Lemon Dressing
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 lb fresh strawberries hulled and sliced
- 1/2 fresh pineapple peeled, cored and cubed (2 1/2 cups)
- 1 mango peeled and diced
- 3 kiwis peeled and sliced
- 2 cups grapes halved
- 4 mandarins peeled and segmented
- 2 cups blueberries
- 1 cup raspberries
Honey Lemon Dressing
- 1 lemon zest of
- 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice from one small lemon
- 2 tbsp honey
Instructions
- Wash and drain well strawberries, grapes, blueberries, raspberries and lemon. Then peel the pineapple, kiwi, mango and mandarins. Slice all the fruit into bite-sized pieces and place in a large mixing bowl.
- In a small bowl, whisk together lemon zest, lemon juice and honey.
- Drizzle the honey lemon dressing on top of the fruit salad, gently toss everything together, and enjoy!
Store: Refrigerate in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
Notes
- Store: Refrigerate in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
- Use lime instead of lemon and mix and match different fruit and berries, depending on season and your budget.Â
- If you would like to add bananas or apples do so right before serving only.
- For best results use fruit that has ripened.Â
Yum, fruit salad is always so great! Can’t wait to try it with honey and lemon!
Looking forward to how you like it!