Broccoli Cashew Salad with Apples, Pears, and Cranberries

 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!

1. Cut broccoli into small, bite-sized pieces.
2. Chop up a cored apple, cored pear, red onion.
3. In a large bowl, combine chopped up broccoli, apples, pear, red onions, cranberries, and cashews.
4. 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.
5. Add in the dressing and stir everything together.

Variations and substitutions

1. Cauliflower. If you want to mix things up, use an equal amount of cauliflower to replace the half amount of broccoli.
2. Nuts. Many types of nuts will work here. Use pecans, peanuts, walnuts, pine nuts, or pistachios instead of cashews.
3. Dried fruit. Dried cranberries work great in this recipe, and so do dried cherries, raisins, or dried blueberries.
4. Fresh Fruit.  The mix of fresh apples and pears works beautifully here, but you can go just with apples or just with pears.
5. 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.

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