10 Hacks For Putting Together the Freshest Fruit Salad This Summer

Flavor- and texture-wise, seasonal fruit always tastes better. Ever had mealy, bland blueberries or apples during their off-season? It's a common and often accidental occurrence, but it's best to avoid buying produce from halfway around the world during its off-season. Instead, look for seasonal produce that's local to you — or at least originating from the continent in which you live.

A fruit salad instantly becomes less appetizing when some bites are mushy and other bites are too tart and tough. Avoid the incongruousness by choosing fruit with even stages of ripeness. Texturally, it will taste better if all pieces of fruit are soft and ripe with a slight crunch to each bite. Additionally, overly ripe fruit can disintegrate quickly into a pulpy mush that coats all the other fruit pieces. By mixing together ripe but not mushy fruits, salads look fresh and vibrant for a longer period of time.

With fruit like cherries or strawberries, remove all stems, pits, and skins, if necessary, from the fruit before tossing it in the bowl. A fruit salad looks cleaner when every piece of fruit is prepped. If you cannot remove the pits or seeds, then warn those who are about to eat it of any items that have something hard inside that's not visible. There's nothing worse than unknowingly biting into a grape that's full of bitter, tooth-breaking seeds.

One of the first tricks learned in culinary school is to cut uniform pieces. Not only is it visually attractive, but it also makes eating the fruit salad easier. Whatever the size of the dice or slice, choose one measurement and stick to it when prepping all the fruit.

Amplify the flavor of fruit salads with the use of fresh citrus zest and juice from lemons or limes. The citrus juices prevent fruit from turning brown and act as the "salt" to fruit, enhancing its flavor with spritzes, to taste. For even more citrus flavor, sprinkle the zest atop the fruit salad.

Mint often finds itself garnishing fruit salads, only to be plucked up and discarded to the side. But herbs, especially mint, actually add a refreshing seasoning to fruit salads with melons, berries, and citrus.

Every once in a while, you'll come across a batch of berries that are tart and tough, signaling that they are not quite ripe. Soften and sweeten unripened fruit with granulated sugar, to taste. The granules will dissolve into the fruit after a few minutes, so no need to worry about the initial grainy texture.