What truly sets this salad apart is the zesty lemon poppy seed vinaigrette—a tangy, slightly sweet dressing that brightens every bite and adds just the right hint of crunch. Oh, an those tiny black speckles tie in nicely with the dragon fruit, don’t you think. The salad is refreshing, colorful, and unapologetically tropical. A perfect warm-weather side dish, light lunch, or crowd-pleasing salad for your next party.

_{This post may contain affiliate links, which means that I make a small commission off items you purchase at no additional cost to you.}

Key Ingredients in This Recipe

Ingredients to make Tropical Fruit Salad

You’ll find the complete list of ingredients and exact quantities in the recipe below.

Mango
Avocado – one of the few fruits that contain fat; avocados contain monounsaturated fat that are good for you. Additionally, avocados contain fiber, and nearly 20 vitamins, minerals.
Dragon fruit – also called pitaya, or strawberry pear, is the fruit of a cactus. Its name derives its skin resembling a dragon’s skin. Dragon fruits can be red, pink or yellow skinned with flesh colors of red-dark pink or white (most popular).
Banana
Orange
Poppy seed vinaigrette (olive oil, lemon juice, poppy seeds, Dijon mustard, honey)
Fresh mint

_{This post may contain affiliate links, which means that I make a small commission off items you purchase at no additional cost to you. Please read my policy page.}

How to Make Tropical Fruit Salad

Step 1 – Cut all the fruits into similar sized cubes or slices and transfer them to a bowl. You can cut them bite-size or even smaller. Bite-size pieces (e.g. a slice of banana, or half a section of orange, mango in cubes etc.) give you the option to really taste the individual fruits. You can also cut them in smaller pieces, creating a true representation of the variety of fruits in the salad, as you scoop all different fruits in one bite.

Step 2 – Transfer all ingredients for the lemon poppy seed vinaigrette (olive oil, lemon juice, poppy seeds, Dijon mustard, honey and salt & pepper) into a bowl. Use a submersion mixer to create a smooth and creamy emulsification of the oil and lemon juice mix. Alternatively, use this Scandinavian-style whipper; works as well and a lot less cleaning up.

Step 3 – Pour vinaigrette over the fruit salad and mix gently, making sure that all fruit pieces are covered with the vinaigrette, maintain their shape. This way you’ll have the best appearance of the fruit.

Sprinkle with torn or coarsely chopped fresh mint.

Alternative, Substitutes and Tips

Other tropical fruits you can use are: papaya, pineapple, passion fruit, coconut, kiwi, jackfruit, starfruit, lychee. It all depends on what you like and what’s available to you.
Add any other type of fruit to your salad, for reasons of your preference, availability, color, taste etc.
Add nuts – they are officially classified as fruits as well. So, you can use macadamia nuts, cashews, Brazil nuts, some of the tropical ones or add pine nuts, pecans, almonds.
Add dry fruits for another type of texture, the chewy part.
Serve with cream, ricotta cheese, cottage cheese or Mascarpone cheese.
If you make this fruit salad a few hours ahead of time, make sure to take it out of the refrigerator 30 minutes before serving. You want to taste the fruit and eating very cold fruit pieces does not do the fruits justice. Don’t leave the fruit salad at room temperature too long.

Top down look into bowl with tropical fruit salad.

Recipes of Other Fruit Salads to Try

Print Recipe

No reviews