Memorial Day marks the (unofficial!) beginning of summer. Are you ready? To add variety to your meal, whip up a side dish or two featuring fruit.
Right now berries and other fruit are just coming in season so it’s the perfect time to use them in your meals. You can use canned fruit, too, to make putting together your fruit salad fast and easy.
Create yummy sauces to coat each fruit piece using recipes for fruit salad with honey vanilla yogurt, tropical fruit with spiced syrup, and easy fruit salad. For something more adventurous try watermelon, mache, and pecan salad or grilled fruit salad – or both!
Fruit Salad with Honey Vanilla Yogurt
Add some creamy sweetness to oranges, grapes, berries and bananas using this fruit salad with honey vanilla yogurt recipe from The Food Network. In a large bowl, have your child whisk together plain yogurt, vanilla extract and a generous helping of honey. Next, add in sliced fruit and carefully stir to coat each piece of fruit.
Tropical Fruit in Spiced Syrup
Create a simple syrup by bringing water and honey to a boil in a saucepan along with whole cloves, a cinnamon stick and a cardamom pod. Simmer until the mixture becomes thick and slightly sticky. The next step in this tropical fruit and spice fruit salad recipe from Eating Well is to discard the spices and add the syrup to cut up pieces of mango, kiwi, pear and dried cherries. No whole spices? Use a sprinkling of cinnamon and allspice as a substitute.
Easy Fruit Salad
Instead of serving your fruit salad in a large bowl, create individual versions using this easy fruit salad recipe from Betty Crocker. Mix together yogurt, honey and lemon juice, and toss with mandarin orange slices, pineapple chunks, grapes and apple. Use clear, plastic cups and place a few lettuce greens on the side (Boston or Romaine work well) then add a scoop of the fruit.
Strawberry-Glazed Fruit Salad
Make strawberries the star of the picnic table with this strawberry-glazed fruit salad from Taste of Home. The simple recipe includes plenty of juicy strawberries sweetened with pineapple chunks and bananas – then finished off with strawberry glaze. That’s it for this show-stopping recipe.
Watermelon, Mache and Pecan Salad
Dress up your buffet table with this watermelon, mache and pecan salad from Southern Living. The recipe includes Southern favorites and taste combinations like the sweetness of watermelon offset with crumbles of sharp Gorgonzola cheese and pecans. If you can’t find mache lettuce, use butter lettuce.
Grilled Fruit Salad
Don’t just stop with burgers – use your grill to make your side dishes, too. That’s the idea behind this grilled fruit salad from Kraft. Grill slices of pineapple, mango, papaya and banana. Serve with a dipping sauce made up of sour cream blended with orange Kool-Aid mix and a dash of cayenne pepper.
Looking for even more Memorial Day recipe ideas? Check out our roundup of potato salad recipes.
This post was originally published in 2016 and is updated regularly.
