Secret Ingredient Fruit Salad

by Stacey Updated: Feb 14, 2024

The perfect summer fruit salad with a surprise, secret ingredient. This delicious fruit salad is easy to make, delicious, and so refreshing.

The bright colors of a fruit salad are perfect any time of the year, so I love having a great fruit salad recipe at the ready. And while most fruit salads don’t really need a recipe, it’s always nice to have one to get the quantities of fruit right.

This Secret Ingredient Fruit Salad has been a family favorite ever since my sister-in-law introduced it to us quite a few years ago. It’s easy, quick, and affordable – because some fruit salads can cost a small fortune in fruit.

This fruit salad simply calls for blueberries, strawberries, green seedless grapes and that secret ingredient. (We’ll get to that big secret here in a sec…)

What is Fruit Salad?

Fruit salad is a dish typically made of a combination of various fresh fruits as a dessert, appetizer, or side dish. Not all fruit salads are the same but most commonly feature fresh fruits like grapes, blueberries, strawberries, apple slices, and pineapple slices. A refreshing and cold dish, fruit salad traditionally is mixed with honey, a yogurt-based dressing, or pie/fruit filling. It may be served on its own or over ice cream, yogurt, and pancakes or waffles. Fruit salad is a popular dish during the hot summer months at potlucks, parties, and picnics.

Fruit salad is beautiful, vibrant, and relatively affordable because of the ingredients. Other less common ingredients are raspberries, bananas, kiwi, and blackberries. Most recommend refraining from including apples and bananas because they can brown and darken the vibrancy of fruit salad! Enjoy!

What is the secret ingredient in this fruit salad?

Okay. I’ll let you in on the secret… Every fruit salad needs a great dressing, right? It adds a pop of flavor and a little sweetness to fruit that might not be at its peak. It also helps to pull it all together.

So what does that in this recipe? Simple. A can of peach pie filling. Seriously. The pie filling not only adds some delicious peaches (already peeled and sliced I might add), it also works perfectly as the sauce to make this simple salad sing!

I know! I was just as surprised the first time I had it, too! But it works beautifully and tastes amazing!

What fruits don’t go together in fruit salad?

While, I don’t like to tell people what they can’t put in their fruit salad, there are a few fruits, I would suggest you refrain from using. Truth is, some fruits are generally considered less suitable for fruit salads due to their texture, flavor, or tendency to overpower other fruits. Here are a few fruits I recommend you avoid using in your fruit salad:

Citrus fruits, likes oranges and grapefruits: Citrus fruits with membranes can make the texture of the fruit salad less appealing. It’s just not a texture I think goes well in a fruit salad.

Very ripe bananas: While I love a banana, ripe bananas can cause a mushy mess in a fruit salad. They can also turn brown and make it just look less pretty. And, you want a pretty fruit salad, am I right?!

Melons, like watermelon and cantaloupe: Now, don’t come at me! I love watermelon and cantaloupe. The issue here is that they have a high water content. This leads to the release of excess moisture, making the salad watery and diluted.

Can I use other pie fillings?

I often get asked about using other pie fillings and while I think they’d taste great, a blueberry or strawberry pie filling is going to turn the whole dish a different color because of the colored filling. Since the peach is relatively clear, you get to see all the pretty fruit colors through. And while apple would be pretty clear too, it’s going to have cinnamon in it, and that might not be the best flavor to add to your fruit salad.

What fruit can you cut the night before?

If you are following this exact recipe, then you can cut the strawberries the night before. You could even cut up the grapes. I don’t recommend cutting up blueberries. I really don’t know why you would want to, but also because they can get a little mushy when cut.

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