Broccoli, Cashew, Apple and Pear Salad with Cranberries and chopped red onions with the most delicious homemade creamy salad dressing, made with mayonnaise, sour cream (or kefir or Greek yogurt), honey, and lemon juice!
This broccoli salad is a healthy recipe that you can make any time of the year, but especially during the winter season to get a boost of antioxidants, vitamins, and fiber!
The creamy salad dressing is so delicious – it will literally make the salad disappear off your plates, that’s how good is the flavor combination of all ingredients.
Whenever I make a broccoli salad, I love combining mayo and sour cream together for a creamy salad dressing and love that flavor combination! If you don’t like sour cream (or don’t have it), feel free to use kefir or Greek yogurt in place of sour cream for an equally good flavor! I also add lemon juice, honey, and salt. Make sure to soften the honey (by heating it up gently) before adding it to other salad dressing ingredients, to make sure it blends in smoothly.
If you still have any doubt about this salad, just take a look at these delicious healthy ingredients: Broccoli, Cashews, Apple, Pear, dried Cranberries, chopped red onions:
Broccoli, Cashew, Apple and Pear Salad with Cranberries and chopped red onions. The homemade dressing is made with mayonnaise, sour cream (or kefir or Greek yogurt), honey, and lemon juice!
- 5 cups broccoli florets , chopped into small bites
- 1 apple , cored and diced
- 1 pear , cored and diced
- 1/4 cup red onion , diced
- 1 cup cashews , toasted or roasted
- 1 cup dried cranberries
- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
- 1/2 cup sour cream or kefir or Greek yogurt
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1/4 cup honey , softened or warmed up
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- In a large bowl, combine together chopped broccoli, diced apple, diced pear, diced red onion, cashews (toasted or roasted) and dried cranberries.
- In a small bowl, stir together mayonnaise, sour cream (or kefir or Greek yogurt), lemon juice, honey, and salt. Note that honey should be soft and runny, warm it up if needed, so that it mixes easily. Whisk the ingredients until well combined and smooth. Add salt if needed.
- Add the dressing to the broccoli salad and stir everything together.
Some people in the family are not fans of nuts. If I leave them out we would miss out on the crunch factor. Would substituting broken pieces of pretzels or dried ramen noodles work? Or would they get too mushy?
Served this for first time at Thanksgiving today and the family loved it. They requested plenty of this salad in their take home containers A definite keeper recipe and will serve at holidays from now on. I needed a healthy salad with a light dressing to counter all the rich foods on the table and this was definitely it. Only changes I made were using light sour cream and added apple cider vinegar and cut back on the lemon juice in the dressing.
Do you think you can do cauliflower instead of broccoli
Hi!! Could I Substitute red onions with minced onions & carrots?
Yes, you could!
Hi there. I was wondering if you can make this a day ahead?
You could make this a day ahead and keep it refrigerated in an air-tight container. Add the dressing right before serving.
Sounds delicious but what gives it such high carbs?? I am diabetic and have to eat low carbs; this doesn’t fit. Are there any ingredients I can swap out?
this is not my recipe but my guess about the high carb count would be from the cashews and the dressing. so you could for starters leave out the nuts and then use a light mayo/sour cream or find a different dressing more of a vinaigrette with the honey lemon combo. good luck
The carbs are from the fruit and honey , Cashews, mayo and sour cream are lower carb foods . And , if you sub “light” sour cream and mayo, you are ADDING , not lowering , carbs, due to added suger .
You could switch from cashews to pecans, almonds or walnuts. They have much lower carbs than cashews.
The high carb count is from the fruit, apples, pears, dried cranberries. There’s only 1/4 c honey in the dressing and salad serves 8 and nuts dont contain carbohydrates. Eat half a serving or let others enjoy if worried about too many carbs. If you swap out all the fruit, it’s not the same salad.
Oh my god – this salad is incredible! I can’t stop eating it – so yummy but still light and fresh. This is my new fave.
Thanks!
Thank you! So glad you like this recipe! 🙂
How about broccoli? Should I cook it before?
You can cook the broccoli. But I used raw broccoli. I just chopped raw broccoli into really small pieces. With the creamy salad dressing, raw broccoli tastes great!