Fruit Salad Dressing

My “go to” side dishes have to be easy. When I’m putting time and energy into making an entree, I don’t have much left in me to give to accompaniments. For this reason, things like frozen and canned vegetables, rice, couscous, roasted potatoes and other vegetables, all make common appearances on our dinner menu. Sometimes, it is fruit salad or cut up fruit. This fruit salad dressing makes fruit salad quick and easy.

Ryan, at our local farm store recommended Sugar Cubes, which are small, cantaloupe-like, sweet melons this week. Always listen to Ryan. As a rule, I trust his recommendations. I ordered three. The Sugar Cubes were sitting on our table to ripen. Although they were still firm, the melon smell was strong, so I figured they were ready and cut them up in the morning. They were delicious, sweet and perfectly ripe. In fact, I really had no plan for the melon except for snacking.

A few weeks ago, I had a request for nachos for dinner. Trying to make nachos into a balanced meal was hard. I waffled between just serving the nachos alone or adding a side dish. My brain kept turning over the options. Do people who ask for nachos for dinner actually care if they have a nutritionally balanced meal? Probably not. After 30 minutes of thinking, I came to the realization that my husband was still going to be hungry. In this case, nachos alone were not going to cut it. Finally, I remembered the melon. It would be perfect to have something fresh and bright with the spicy nachos.

I have a basic dressing I use for fruit salad which is made with simple syrup.  In the summer, I keep simple syrup in the fridge for all sorts of things. Relieved that I was all ready to go, I didn’t have to waste anymore thought on dinner. This is a very simple dressing that is really just a base for whatever you want to add to it and is not finicky. If you don’t have mint you can skip it. I have added a half teaspoon of fresh ginger when I am in the mood.

The melon solution was a win since it was only going to take me about 5 minutes to put together. I didn’t have to spend any more time thinking about dinner.

Print Recipe

Fruit Salad Dressing

A Sweet and Citrusy Dressing for Fruit

Prep Time5 minutes mins

Cook Time3 minutes mins

Course: Dessert, Salad, Side Dish, Snack

Keyword: Dressing, Fruit, Salad

Servings: 5

Ingredients

Simple Syrup

• 1 cup Sugar
• 1 cup Water

Fruit Salad Dressing

• 1/4 cup Simple Syrup
• Juice of 1/2 Lime
• 4 Mint Leaves Slivered

Instructions

Simple Syrup

• Put sugar and water in a microwave safe dish. Stir and microwave 1-1.5 minutes until sugar is completely dissolved.
• Refrigerate until cool. Keep extra in refrigerator.
• (This makes more than you need for the fruit salad. Keep extra simple syrup refrigerated to sweeten cold drinks like iced tea or bubble tea)

Fruit Salad Dressing

• Put refrigerated simple syrup, lime juice, and mint into a bowl. Mix. Let stand for 5 minutes for mint to release some of it's oils. Mix again.
  
• Dress fruit.
  

Modifications

The good news about something like this is I don’t have to make many modifications because it is so simple and easy to begin with.

When I microwave simple syrup, I like to use a 2 cup Pyrex measuring cup. It has a handle which is easy to grip with one hand even when the cup is hot. The pouring spout also makes it easy to pour the syrup out without spilling it.

I keep the simple syrup in a squeeze bottle in my refrigerator so that it is easy to squirt the right amount into a measuring cup (or my iced tea).

Although I managed to juice the half lime with my hands and a fork, I don’t see why you couldn’t use the juice from one of those plastic squeezy limes from the produce section. I used my kitchen shears to cut the mint leaves into small slivers. Mint leaves are just too small for me to cut with a knife.