Gordon Ramsay’s spicy fruit salad is the tangy fruit salad from Ultimate Home Cooking: pineapple, crunchy green apple, pear, mango and cucumber. They’re tossed in a dressing of tamarind, lime, palm sugar and red chili, with crushed toasted peanuts. It serves 4 and takes about 25 minutes.
He brought the idea home from his trips around the Far East and calls it “one of the most surprising dishes I came back with.” In the book it’s a light pudding, but he likes it “first thing in the morning,” which is how he makes it in his tangy fruit salad video on YouTube.
The dressing does the work, with a Thai-style balance. Tamarind brings the sour, palm sugar the sweet, chili the heat and lime the freshness, so every bite hits all four at once. Then the peanuts go in toasted much darker than you’d expect, because in the video he says that deep roast is what transforms the dressing.
Gordon Ramsay’s Tangy Fruit Salad
Course: BreakfastCuisine: AsianDifficulty: Easy4
20
minutes5
310
kcalGordon Ramsay’s tangy fruit salad recipe from Ultimate Home Cooking (2013), page 28, his spicy breakfast fruit salad with a tamarind, lime and chili dressing. These ingredients make an Asian-style fruit salad with peanuts for 4.
Ingredients
- For the fruit salad:
1 small pineapple, peeled, cored and cut into bite-size pieces
2 crunchy green apples, quartered, cored and cut into bite-size chunks
2 pears, not too ripe, cored and cut into bite-size pieces
1 mango, not too ripe, peeled and cut into bite-size pieces
½ cucumber, peeled, seeded and cut into bite-size chunks
- For the dressing:
1½ tablespoons tamarind paste
zest and juice of 1 lime
2 to 3 tablespoons palm sugar or brown sugar
½ to 1 red chili, finely sliced, to taste
3 tablespoons skinless unsalted peanuts
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Directions
- Make the dressing: Mix the tamarind paste, lime zest and juice, sugar and chili, then season with a little salt and pepper. Taste and adjust.
- Toast the peanuts: Toast them in a dry skillet with a small pinch of salt until golden and toasted.
- Crush the peanuts: Wrap them in a clean kitchen towel and run a rolling pin over them, then stir them into the dressing. Taste and add a little more sugar or salt if it needs it.
- Toss: Put the fruit and cucumber in a serving bowl, add half the dressing and toss well. Taste and add the rest of the dressing if you want more.
Notes
- The book gives a range for the chili, ½ to 1. In the video he uses the whole chili but only half the seeds, for a salad that's just slightly hot.
- Calories are about 310 a serving. Most of them come from the fruit itself, the sugar and the peanuts.
FAQs
Can I use brown sugar instead of palm sugar?
Yes, the book itself says “palm or brown sugar.” Palm sugar is the one people struggle to find, and brown sugar gives the same rounded sweetness against the tamarind.
Start with 2 tablespoons, taste, and only go to 3 if the dressing still tastes too sour.
How does he peel the pineapple?
Top and bottom off, then stand it up and shave the skin off from top to bottom with a sharp knife. In the video he doesn’t chase every little brown spike, because cutting deep for them wastes half the fruit and, as he puts it, it’s all good fiber.
Then he halves it, cuts each half into quarters, slices out the core and chops the rest into chunks.
Is there a winter fruit salad?
Yes, in Secrets (2003), page 164. He makes a tropical fruit salad with pomegranate seeds to brighten the winter days, when tropical fruits are in good supply and homegrown ones are scarce.
For autumn, Cooking for Friends (2008), page 202, has plums, apples and pears in a hot syrup of thyme, ginger, vanilla and star anise. The fruit then sits in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
What else can I do with the tamarind paste?
Gordon’s own tip in the book: use it in pad thai, Asian fish dishes and chicken curries, and in his sticky spiced chicken wings. Tamarind also sours the shrimp paste in the party version of his green papaya salad.
He serves those wings with his asian green beans in a peanut dressing, so one jar covers a whole Southeast Asian dinner.
Does he make other fruit salads?
Plenty, mostly as desserts with a syrup. In Just Desserts (2001) his exotic fruit salad sits in a spiced or citrus syrup with a splash of white rum or Angostura bitters, finished with grated fresh coconut.
In his Great Escape book on India (2010), the fruit gets a syrup of cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper and lime zest, his way of livening up the fruit platters served after an Indian meal.
Zaytouna Studio Team is the kitchen team behind Chef Ramsay Recipes. We cook Gordon Ramsay’s recipes from his cookbooks and videos in a home kitchen and write them up for yours, with US and metric measurements.