Start with a simple salad like this one, made of mixed greens with red grapes, pear, almonds, dried sweet cherries, and crumbled feta. Drizzle on a delicious Cherry Balsamic Salad Dressing for the perfect finishing touch!
This recipe is based on a similar salad that I tried a few weeks ago and fell in love with. When reading that there were grapes in the salad I was a little intrigued and thought it might be a little weird. And now, after having that salad and creating this similar one, I’m pretty sure I will put grapes in all my salads from here on out.
The grapes totally work in this fruity salad, and they are insanely good when coated in Cherry Balsamic Salad Dressing!
What cherry juice goes in this dressing?
The star of the dressing is the cherry juice. I recommend using a juice that is 100% black cherry juice.
You can be sure the juice is 100% cherry by reading the ingredients; the only ingredient should be cherries. If it has filtered water, it will be diluted and probably less flavorful.
I’ve used the R.W. Knudsen Just Black Cherry Juice® and highly recommend it (the ingredients read: juice from ripe, whole black cherries). I’ve also used 100% Black Cherry Juice® made by Great Value. Any black cherry juice works as long as you make sure it is in fact, all cherries.
Quick Tip
Confused by all the types of cherry juice? Black cherry juice is what we want for this recipe. It’s quite sweet naturally, without any added sugar, and makes the perfect flavoring for our salad. Tart cherry juice (whether sweetened or not) is quite pucker-worthy. They aren’t kidding when they say those cherries are tart! But those cherries are ultra healthy and great for other purposes–but not this dressing. Cherry juice cocktail contains many more ingredients, including other fruit juices and sugar. So be sure to get 100% black cherry juice for this delicious balsamic dressing.
Salad substitutions
- Use dried cranberries instead of dried cherries. Or use dried tart cherries instead of dried sweet cherries. Dried tart cherries do pair nicely with Cherry Balsamic Salad Dressing.
- Add sliced strawberries to the salad.
- Add a ripe, chopped avocado.
- Candy or toast the almonds or buy pre-roasted honey almonds
- Replace the fresh pear with canned pears if pears aren’t in season.
- Use bleu cheese, Gorgonzola, or goat cheese in place of the feta cheese.
- Replace the sugar with honey in Cherry Balsamic Salad Dressing (start with 1-2 tablespoons honey; honey and white sugar aren’t a 1:1 substitution).
Leftover Cherry Balsamic Salad Dressing
This recipe will make more dressing than you’ll likely use on the actual salad (unless you really love lots of salad dressing).
The dressing stores in an airtight container in the fridge for 5-7 days, so while you could halve the dressing recipe, why not make the full amount and use it on other salads throughout the week?
Drizzle leftover Cherry Balsamic Salad Dressing on any green salads throughout the week. Or get creative and use the leftover dressing in one of these ways!
More fruity salad recipes
- Strawberry Salad with a citrus vinaigrette
- Apple Salad with an apple cider vinaigrette
- Mandarin Orange Salad with an orange poppy seed dressing
- Strawberry Avocado Salad with candied almonds
- Fruit Salad Recipe with tons of mixed fruit!
Cherry Balsamic Salad Dressing
Ingredients
Dressing
- 5 tablespoons 100% black cherry juice
- 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/2 teaspoon Dijon-style mustard
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
Salad
- 6 cups mixed greens
- 1 large pear thinly sliced
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice
- 3/4 cup red grapes
- 1/2 cup sliced almonds
- 1/2 cup dried cherries
- 1/3 cup feta cheese
- Sliced strawberries optional
Instructions
- To make the dressing, combine all the ingredients except the olive oil in a small blender jar, pulse until combined. Drizzle in the olive oil, and pulse again until just combined and emulsified. Alternatively, combine all the ingredients in a jar and shake until well combined. You may need to stir up the sugar as it tends to settle on the bottom.
- To toast the almonds, spread the sliced almonds in a single layer in a dry pan over medium-high heat. Stir every 15 seconds for about 1-2 minutes, or until they slightly darken and become fragrant—be careful not to let them burn. You can also use honey-roasted almonds in this salad.
- Thinly slice a large pear and toss with the lemon juice. Slice the red grapes in half. Add the sliced pears, sliced grapes, almonds, and dried cherries to the mixed greens. Toss with dressing and sprinkle feta cheese on top.
Video
Recipe Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
I live in the Cherry Capitol of the World “Traverse City Mich. and loved this!!! If you get a chance try Cherry Bay Orchards dried cherries and juice sold online, and Fustini’s Cherry balsamic sold online all of these are great products!
So glad you liked this!! Thanks so much for the tip, sounds amazing 🙂
Are you kidding?! This salad looks amazing! Grapes, cherries and pears?! Totally love the combination. That cherry balsamic vinaigrette is such an ingenious idea too!
Awe thank you so much! It’s become one of our favorite dressings 🙂
There are so many delicious grape varieties at our farmer’s market at the moment! I guess next time I should save some for this beautiful salad rather than gobbling them down right away 🙂
I love all the great fruit additions to this salad, and when you add the feta – oh yes please! This will be on our dinner table soon!
Haha! I have the same problem — it’s hard to save grapes for a salad 🙂 Thank you Amy!!
This salad does look amazing!! Beautiful colors. I love your new profile pic by the way 🙂
Awe thank you so much! 🙂 It was fun to finally update it! 🙂
I agree that you totally don’t have to worry, I saw this and went “what a gorgeous salad!” I could eat something like this for lunch every day. <3
That is so sweet, thank you so much Allie! 🙂
Yummy! I love sweet fruit mixed with colorful greens!