Simple delicious fruit salad with fresh strawberries, white nectarines, honey, and mint
Every summer gathering should include a fruit salad, don’t you think? Nectarines and peaches are in season right now and when I saw some beautiful white nectarines at the market I couldn’t resist. We used to have a white nectarine tree whose fruit you had to eat leaning over the sink they were so juicy. Grocery store-bought nectarines are much firmer than the ones we used to grow, but that firmness just helps them hold up better in a fruit salad like this.
My favorite way to make any fruit salad, including this nectarine strawberry version, is to toss the fruit with honey, a little lemon juice, and some thinly sliced fresh mint from the garden. The honey helps the fruit macerate and extract some of their juices, the lemon juice contributes a little tang, and the mint? The mint plays well with them all.
I made this salad a few days ago to cap a lunch I prepared for my friends Lisa and Jenny, who insisted that I put it on the blog. So here you go girls! The recipe is shown to serve four, but you could easily scale it up for a Labor Day gathering crowd.
Strawberry Nectarine Fruit Salad Recipe
- Prep time: 10 minutes
- Yield: Serves 4
The proportions are flexible, depending on the sweetness of your fruit and what you have on hand. We used about a 2:1 ratio of nectarine chunks to strawberries.
The amounts given are for four servings. You can easily scale up this recipe to feed a crowd!
Ingredients
- 2 to 3 large white nectarines (3/4 pound to a pound), cut into edible sized chunks, pit and stem removed
- About 8 to 10 fresh strawberries, stems removed, quartered
- 1 Tbsp honey
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- 4 leaves fresh mint, thinly sliced
Method
Gently toss the chopped nectarines and strawberries together in a medium bowl with the honey and lemon juice. Let sit for 15-20 minutes, so that the fruit has a chance to macerate.
Right before serving, gently toss with thinly sliced fresh mint.
Taste for tartness. If too tart for your taste, sprinkle a little sugar over it. If cloyingly sweet, sprinkle with a little more lemon juice. The level of sweetness or tartness will depend on the specific fruit you are using, so you will need to make adjustments depending on your fruit.
