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Broccoli Cashew Salad with Apples, Pears, and Cranberries is tossed with the most delicious homemade creamy salad dressing. This is an easy and healthy recipe packed with fruits and veggies.
The salad has an amazing texture thanks to the crunchy cashews, fresh vegetables, and fruits! The easy creamy salad dressing is made with mayonnaise, sour cream (or kefir or Greek yogurt), honey, and lemon juice! If you love broccoli salad, be sure to check out these 2 delicious salads: broccoli bacon salad and creamy broccoli and cauliflower salad.
This broccoli cashew 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! It's easy-to-make, and it keeps well refrigerated. A great choice for family weeknight dinners, barbecues, potlucks, and parties!
Salad dressing
Whenever I make a broccoli salad, I love combining mayo and sour cream together for a creamy salad dressing and it's a lovely 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.
How to make broccoli cashew salad
Broccoli salad is all about chopping up the fresh veggies and fruits and then combining them in a large bowl with a salad dressing. That's it!
- Cut broccoli into small, bite-sized pieces.
- Chop up a cored apple, cored pear, red onion.
- In a large bowl, combine chopped up broccoli, apples, pear, red onions, cranberries, and cashews.
- In a small bowl, stir together mayonnaise, sour cream (or kefir or Greek yogurt), lemon juice, honey, and salt. Tip: honey should be soft and runny. Warm it up if needed, so that it mixes easily.
- Add in the dressing and stir everything together.
Variations and substitutions
- Cauliflower. If you want to mix things up, use an equal amount of cauliflower to replace the half amount of broccoli.
- Nuts. Many types of nuts will work here. Use pecans, peanuts, walnuts, pine nuts, or pistachios instead of cashews.
- Dried fruit. Dried cranberries work great in this recipe, and so do dried cherries, raisins, or dried blueberries.
- Fresh Fruit. The mix of fresh apples and pears works beautifully here, but you can go just with apples or just with pears.
- Salad dressing. For the salad dressing, combine together mayonnaise, sour cream, lemon juice, honey, and salt. You can lighten up the dressing by replacing some of the mayo or sour cream with kefir or Greek yogurt.
Other Broccoli Salad Recipes to Try
Broccoli Cashew Salad with Apples and Pears
Ingredients
Salad:
- 5 cups broccoli florets chopped into small bites
- 1 large apple cored and diced
- 1 large pear (firm, not soft), cored and diced
- ¼ cup red onion diced
- 1 cup cashews toasted or roasted
- 1 cup dried cranberries
Creamy Salad Dressing:
- ½ cup mayonnaise
- ½ cup sour cream or kefir or Greek yogurt
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- ¼ cup honey softened or warmed up
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- 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.
Notes
- How to roast raw cashews. I used raw cashews for this recipe, and I toasted them in the oven. Roast raw cashews in the preheated oven at 350 F on a rimmed baking sheet for 10 minutes or longer. Unlike other nuts, cashews can take more than 10 minutes to get roasted. They should change color and turn rich golden brown. Depending on your oven and your oven settings, that can take between 10 and 15 minutes (or even up to 20 minutes in some ovens). Move them around once or twice so that they roast evenly on all sides. You can also purchase pre-roasted cashews - they do not need roasting.
- Pears. Choose pears that are firmer in texture and to the touch. Otherwise, they might get mushy in this salad. I used firm pears without any soft spots or visible bruising on the skin. The same applies to apples.
Nutrition
Nutrition Disclaimer:
The nutritional information on this website is only an estimate and is provided for convenience and as a courtesy only. The accuracy of the nutritional information for any recipe on this site is not guaranteed. It should not be used as a substitute for a professional nutritionist's advice.
Sounds delicious! I could also see adding chopped chicken breast to make it a main dish kind of salad.
Yes, you could add chopped cooked chicken breast!
i appreciate you including the nutritional info. However, I need to know how much a “ serving?” Is? A cup? Half cup?
If you could please share this info I’d be very grateful! Thank you!
The recipe states that it makes eight servings. Just by eyeballing the ingredients, the salad, including dressing, appears to make approximately seven cups. So a serving would be a little over a cup.
Salted or unsalted cashews?
Either kind will work.
This was a huge hit at a family gathering. Oops, I forgot the lemon juice but still tasted awesome and it all went!! I used fresh broccoli that I steamed for color and better flavor. I dislike raw broccoli.
So glad you tried this recipe and liked it! Thank you for stopping by and sharing your kind comment!
Jicama would work for crunch and wouldn't get soggy.
This salad has a very high sugar content. I get the apple and pear but the dried cranberries are just like candy. Maybe substitute a few cherries or blueberries that have had the juice squeezed out. Also too much honey in the dressing. Maybe add more yogourt - reduce honey to 1 tsp and add 1/2 tsp cinnamon. There has to be a tasty way to reduce sugar content. Happy eating!
Love the idea of adding cinnamon to the dressing. Thanks
Like any recipe, it’s totally to ones own liking, diet, preferences so don’t add the cranberries. The same goes for the honey; add less if that’s what you want.
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?
Try roasted chickpeas for crunch. That’s what I’m going to do.
Boy, what great ideas going on here, roasted chickpeas sounds great too, thanks
How many does this serve?? I need a salad for 10 ppl.
This salad makes about 8 servings.
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.
So glad to hear you tried this recipe for Thanksgiving and enjoyed it! It's a great salad that looks festive and is perfect for the holidays!
Do you think you can do cauliflower instead of broccoli
Absolutely. You could use 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 .
Your advice was way off. The high carbs are not from nuts or the dressing. It’s the cranberries, fruit, and honey.
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.
FYI, nuts DO contain carbohydrates.
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!
You could use broccolini. Same idea but it has a milder flavor than broccoli