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Fruit Salad with Mint, Lime & Ginger Sugar


I’m not one to gush about a recipe that I’ve thrown together myself, but this fruit salad was great. Everyone that ate it closed their eyes and said “Wow, what is in this?”, and even my husband and kids said it was amazing. It’s really easy, too. The most time-consuming thing is prepping the fruit.

When I was grocery shopping last night all of the melons looked really good, and then there was a really big, ripe pineapple sitting on the shelf, so I picked that up as well. I had bought a tiny watermelon, but in the end decided that I didn’t need it in this fruit salad. You could certainly add watermelon, or really lots of different fruits; mango would be a great addition, as would papaya, or any other kind of melon.

I’ve read a recipe in the past that used a mint sugar, and I love mint with fruit so I thought that would be a good place to start. One of my favorite flavor combinations is lime and cantaloupe — I love to eat a half a cantaloupe that I’ve squeezed a lime into the center of. Try it! But rather than add different flavors separately, I thought that lime zest would also be good ground into the sugar. And once I tried that I thought the extra zing of fresh ginger, which I adore, would be the final ingredient to really make this sugar great. The combination of the mint, lime and ginger all work really well together.

This recipe made enough fruit salad to serve at least 12 or more people and would be a great thing to bring to a party or picnic.

Try it! Let me know what you think.

Fruit Salad with Mint, Lime & Ginger Sugar

Yield: 8-12 cups of fruit salad, depending on the size of your fruits

1 whole pineapple, peeled, cored and cut into pieces
1 whole large cantaloupe, halved, cored, skin removed and cut into small cubes
1 whole honeydew melon, halved, cored, skin removed and cut into small cubes

Sugar Mixture:

  • ½ cup sugar
  • 1/3 cup mint leaves, washed, dried and removed from stems
  • Zest from 2 limes
  • 1” piece of fresh ginger root, peeled, sliced and roughly chopped
  • Juice from 1 lime

Place sugar and mint leaves in bowl of a small food processor.


Pulse until mint is very finely chopped and sugar has turned green.


Add the lime zest and pulse again until lime zest is finely ground and sugar is a darker green.



Add the chopped ginger and pulse again, scraping down bowl once and blending one final time.



Add chopped pineapple to a large work bowl and top with about a tablespoon of the sugar mixture. Using clean hands, mix well until the sugar coats all the pineapple.



Add the cubed cantaloupe to the pineapple and again top with about a teaspoon of the sugar mixture.  Mix well with your hands to combine.



Add the cubed honeydew melon to the fruit and scrape all of the remaining sugar mixture onto the melon. Pour the lime juice onto fruit. Again, using clean hands, carefully toss the fruit to evenly distribute the sugar mixture.



Garnish with fresh mint leaves and serve immediately, or keep refrigerated until ready to serve.

Comments

  1. All I can say is ~ yummy!

    Hugs,
    Susan and Bentley

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