The Sweet Way To Keep Your Fruit Salad From Turning Brown And Mushy

Fruit salad is the perfect side for cookouts, picnics, and pretty much any occasion where you want to showcase fresh fruit. It's refreshing, colorful, and easily customizable (like topping it with French toast). But if you've ever prepared fruit salad a little too soon in advance, you'll be familiar with the one downside — it turns brown, or even worse, mushy, quicker than your guests can eat it. So here's a quick and easy fix. Soaking your fruit salad in honey.

Make a diluted honey mixture with 2 tablespoons of honey per 1 cup of water, and soak your cut fruits in it for around 5 minutes before assembling the salad. This will help preserve the fruit and slow down the browning process, since honey contains a compound that blocks the enzyme responsible for browning fruit. In fact, this quick soak will give you 8 hours of fresh-looking fruit — which is perfect if you're preparing it ahead of time. And if you want to take things a notch further, you can even incorporate honey into your salad dressing.

If you don't have any honey on hand, there are a few other tricks to keeping your fruit salad fresh and bright. After cutting your fruit, drizzle on a citrus juice like lemon, lime, or pineapple. The natural acids in these juices lower the pH and slow down the browning process. Squeezing on some citrus juice won't make your fruit salad taste overly sour, but if you're worried, go for milder options like orange or pineapple juice. You can also soak your fruit salad with a clear, carbonated drink that contains citric acid (here's proof that lemonade can stop apples browning). Just a few minutes is enough to let the acid work its magic and preserve the fruit's color.

If you're not serving your fruit salad immediately, make sure to cover it well and store it in the fridge. Any unnecessary oxygen exposure will brown the fruit quicker, so the less air your fruit salad has, the better. Any dressings should also be added right before serving, since the fruit can turn mushy otherwise. Whichever method you use, you might just impress your guests with your long-lasting fruit salad.