Fruit salad is one of the simplest, healthiest dish options to add to a summer dinner party, meal or picnic, and it just got easier.  We used strawberry corer, pineapple and apple slicers, and orange peelers to help us speed through this salad prep time, which ended up being less than ten minutes.  Though fruit salads are simply a sliced and mixed variety of (ideally in season) fruit, there is a little technique that can make your salad stand out. For a detailed picture diary of using the aforementioned tools, view our fruit salad slide show.

Strawberries: crucial for spring and summer fruit salads. The color and flavor add a nice touch. With a strawberry corer, time removing the stem and core is minimized. Then, slice the strawberry into halves or quarters for small bite sizes.

1. Grasp stem of strawberry by opening claw up to width of stem.
2. Insert claw into strawberry.
3. Twist and pull corer out of strawberry.
4. Slice from top to bottom in half or quarters with knife.

Pineapple: Fresh pineapple elevates your mix from tasty to irresistible. Sometimes it takes a while to prepare though.  This corer makes it easy to include uniformly sliced pineapple. The one drawback is the wasted pineapple that may not fit in corer, especially if you have a larger pineapple. To remedy this, you can save the left-out pineapple to slice from the skin for later.

1. slice off bottom and top of pineapple with a knife.
2. Place corer on top of pineapple, with core of pineapple lined up under circle of corer.
3. Press down on handles so that corer goes through bottom of pineapple.
4. Take out core
5. Slice fruit into bite sized slices.

Oranges, Tangelos, etc.: Oranges go well with any mix of fruit and they add color.  Peeling with fingers can be hard. Use a simple orange peeler to speed things up.

1. Go around orange twice with sharp end of peeler so that you end up with a skin divided into quarters.
2. Peel off skin in the sections you just made with the flat end of peeler. If the fruit is ripe enough you may be able to peel back sections with your hands just as easily.
3. Separate slices and, if necessary, cut into bite sized pieces. In a large orange, cutting slices in half will do.

Apples: Apples can be a nice touch, especially if you’re including berries and bananas. Leave the peel on for the color.

1. Line center of corer up with stem of apple.
2. Press through apple.
3. Cut slices into bite sized pieces.

Whatever fruit you decide to use, remember that presentation matters. It actually is pretty representative of the taste.  Choosing fruit that commonly is matched together in juices is also a safe bet that your salad will taste great.  Here are some of my favorite combos:

Tropical: pineapple, strawberry, banana, orange, kiwi

Orchard: Apple, blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, grape, banana,

Bright: Mango, strawberry, pineapple, kiwi

Pretty: pear, blackberry, rasberry , banana, kiwi, strawberry

Finish off any fruit salad by squeezing lemon over it. This keeps the fruit from turning brown.