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Fruit, Glorious Fruit
By Katie Ayoub
Add the best of the season to your salads for vibrant, delicious results.
Offering your customers fresh fruit not only conveys wholesomeness, but it also delivers great taste and eye appeal. Delicious fruit, served at the peak of freshness, enlivens a salad. It heralds the season while adding contrasting sweetness and texture to green salads, as well as composed salads.
Fruit may also serve up perceived value to the customer: spinach salad moves away from boring to fresh with a handful of strawberry slices or a splash of orange segments.
According to Mintel Menu Insights1, the top five fruits in salads are:
- Oranges
- Pears
- Apples
- Cranberries
- Mangos
Plus, even more varieties are finding their way into salads – adding juiciness and sweetness to the mix. Consider green apples, strawberries, raspberries, plums, blueberries, pomegranates and peaches. Or, look to pineapple, grapefruit, kiwi and apricot.
Fruitful Inspiration
Our chefs at Kraft Foodservice have incorporated fruit into savory salads in beautiful, wonderful ways. Aware that food cost is a consideration when adding fresh fruit to the menu, they suggest offering seasonal fruit.
 "Stay with the seasons," says Aliza Katz, an Corporate Chef at Kraft Foodservice. "Offer the salad as an LTO – it will keep it fresh and exciting for your customers, and will allow you to change up the fruit with what’s at peak ripeness and affordability."
What’s the appeal of fruit in a salad?
"Fruit counters with a little sweetness against the bitter greens and other salad components," says Jeff Basalik, Executive Corporate Chef at Kraft Foodservice. "You get the health-and-wellness benefits of the fruit. And, from a culinary standpoint, fruit gives salads great eye appeal and added flavor."
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Behind the Recipes
In the decadent Lobster, Watercress and Mango Salad with Oriental Sesame Dressing, the mango adds vibrant colour and sweetness.
"The mango’s rich, sweet flavor echoes the rich, sweet flavor of the lobster meat," says Basalik. "Both the mango and lobster are counterbalanced by the tang of the dressing and the sharpness of the greens."
For the Chicken and Melon Salad, our chefs position the refreshing, sweet flavor of honeydew melon against the crunch of hazelnuts and mixed baby greens, the tang of goat cheese, and the protein punch of sliced chicken.
"We drizzle KRAFT Raspberry Vinaigrette Fat Free Dressing to add a sweet, fruity note to the salad," says Basalik.
Ruby-red pomegranate adds gorgeous colour, and apple slices add crisp, fresh flavor to the Spinach Salad with Apple and Pomegranate Seeds.
"We brought in the pomegranate seeds for that great eye appeal and bittersweet taste," says Katz. "And, if pomegranates are not available, dried cranberries are a wonderful alternative."
Katz adds that whatever fruit you choose – be it dried cranberries in a salad at Thanksgiving or ripe raspberries in a summer salad – adding fruit can really make your salad menu stand out. |
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1 Mintel Menu Insights is a resource for analyzing trends in the restaurant industry. For more information, go to www.menuinsightss.com |