Colorful fruit salads aren’t just for warmer months. Some of the prettiest, tastiest fruits you can put in a bowl emerge during the winter, and an assortment of seasonal fruits can serve as a refreshing snack or a brightening dish to serve at the end of a meal. As with building any kind of fruit salad, the right selection of fruits and herbs can keep pieces fresh and intact instead of mushy and disappointingly limp.
Even if you don’t serve the entire fruit salad at once, you can use leftovers in baking projects, toss handfuls on top of morning plates of pancakes, or use spoonfuls to fill jars of overnight oatmeal. With a prepared fruit salad at the ready, your breakfast bowls of oatmeal and afternoon yogurt snacks can be quickly topped, and you can easily scoop a serving into dishes of ice cream. Get your prettiest bowls ready and wipe off that cutting board — cold, dreary days are about to get a whole lot sweeter.
Add pops of color with pomegranate
The thick skins of pomegranates can be tricky to peel, but your hard work will be rewarded once you have plopped the separated ruby fruit jewels into your salad bowls. These tiny, juicy seeds offer a flavorful burst of texture to a bowl of fruit and deliver vitamins and nutrients to keep immunity strong during colder months.
This tartly sweet fruit is in season from October through the beginning of January. When selecting ripe pomegranates from the store, assess the firmness and texture of the outer skin of the fruit and compare the weights of different orbs to find the juiciest options available. If you can’t be bothered to open the fruit up yourself, you can buy the arils to scoop quickly into not only your fruit salad recipes but also your next honeyed pomegranate bread-making attempt. The sweet and sour flavor of the pomegranate can complement other varieties of seasonal fruits while bringing color to your chosen assortment of salad ingredients.
Include juicy bursts of green with kiwi
When peeled, kiwi fruits bring a vivid spot of green to salad bowls and can be cut and diced proportionally to suit the other ingredients in your recipe. You won’t need much to complement a fruit salad made with these morsels; a honey-lime dressing or a quick drizzle of maple syrup can help amplify the refreshing natural sweetness of kiwis. Kiwis pack plenty of vitamin C, a helpful immunity booster during winter months.
When searching for kiwis to take home from the market, note that the fruits will have a sweet smell to them when ripe and will give slightly when squeezed. A perfectly ripe kiwi won’t be mushy in your winter salad recipe, and you’ll be able to mix the other ingredients together without creating a juicy mess at the bottom of the salad bowl. Slice the fruits into pieces right before serving for the freshest, crispest result.
Spruce up your fruit salad with the tangy taste of citrus
With an array of yellow, green, orange, red, and pink shades, the variety of citrus fruits you can choose from will instantly brighten your plate and beautify your winter salad recipes. Citrus fruits reach their peak during winter, so you’ll have a wide selection of oranges, yuzu, tangerines, pomelos, grapefruit, kumquats, lemons, and lime to slice, dice, and squeeze into your fruit salads.
Whether you choose cara cara oranges or pretty pink grapefruits, you’ll want to supreme your citrus fruits, which means to segment the pieces by carefully cutting away the white membranes for a prettier presentation and softer texture. Work over a bowl to save any dropped fruit juice to make an herby salad dressing or to quickly flavor water for easy sipping. Alternatively, experiment with the sizes and types of cuts to create interesting visual appeal in your salad bowl, or simply use whole pieces from smaller fruits like tangerines to build bulk in your fruit dish.
Persimmons make a pretty embellishment
Persimmons can range in flavor and offer a deep orange color when ripe. Try fuyu persimmons for a sweeter dish or reach for hachiya persimmons for a more savory-leaning recipe. If you want to enhance your fruit salad with burrata or goat cheese, persimmons play well with these flavor profiles.
Persimmons can appear in markets in the late fall months. You’ll find that they will smell subtly sweet when ripe, and you’ll want to purchase fruit that doesn’t have many noticeable spots for the best-looking presentations. For an added aesthetic touch, you can slice a persimmon placed on its side in half, then cut across the fruit to reveal a natural imprint of a star in its center. To match the pieces of fruit to the rest of your salad ingredients, this piece of persimmon can then be cut in half once more, or you can throw the whole slice directly into your salad bowl. Save a few persimmons to make broiled cheese dip to serve alongside your fruit salad.
Pears create satisfying bites of texture
Pears can lend a gratifying bite to winter fruit salads. Roast pears to pair with manchego cheese and top with a dressing made with honey, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil. Whereas smaller, delicate summer pears ripen on the tree, winter pears boast a grittier texture and won’t bruise as easily. The pieces can be cut to nestle in nicely along with the rest of your salad ingredients.
You’ll want to use ripe pears that give way to the touch, but avoid using overripe pears since these can turn to mush once combined with other fruits. When ripe, a pear’s neck will give slightly when pressed, and the flesh of the fruit should be buttery. Once pears are sliced and oxygen comes into contact with the exposed surface, browning will eventually occur. The presence of lemon juice can help delay this natural process. Toss in a few apples, and you have yourself a winter fruit salad that is pleasing in all the right ways.
