How To Make Boozy Fruit Salad The Star Of Your Adult-Only Cookout

In summer 2024, beer brand Leinenkugel's began running a spot called "Wisconsin Fruit Salad." That's the name fun-loving picnic participants in the ad apply to a bowlful of Leinenkugel's cans. The "salad" is made of the brand's fruit-flavored beers, including lemon-flavored Summer Shandy, Grapefruit Shandy, and Juicy Peach sour. (Oddly enough, Berry Weiss and Lakeside Cherry were left out.) While throwing a few cans in a bowl is undoubtedly the easiest way to make a boozy fruit salad, it's also the least subtle, and not everyone's a fan of fruity beer. You can, however, make a regular fruit salad, spike it, and serve it to partygoers who are both old enough and willing to imbibe.

There are various different ways to go about doing this, depending on the fruits in the salad. Does the salad have a lot of pineapple? Use rum as a dressing and sprinkle on some shredded coconut for a piña colada effect. Is your salad made with orange segments? Dress it with tequila and lime juice then sprinkle on some coarse salt to make it more margarita-like. If the mix leans heavily on strawberries, make a dressing from rum and lime juice, sprinkle the spiked fruit with sugar, and call it a daiquiri salad.

In many boozy recipes, you'll see some sort of a disclaimer about how the alcohol will cook out, which is true to some extent (although, perhaps, only partially so). Fruit salad, however, isn't cooked at all, and anyone who remembers getting hammered off of a vodka-spiked watermelon can assure you that fruit is no impediment to intoxication. If that's a concern, you might want to consider using a lower-proof beverage in your salad.

Giada de Laurentiis' boozy fruit salad combines white wine with strawberries, melon, and grapes. You could make a more sangria-like salad using red wine with oranges and apples. Sparkling wine, too, can be used as a salad dressing, kind of like Champagne vinegar without the vinegar. In fact, if you find yourself with leftover mimosas after mixing up a pitcher, the O.J. and sparkling wine combo would be perfect for a fruit salad made with berries or mango.

To bring things full circle, it's also possible to make a fruit salad with beer – even one where the fruit is fresh from the produce department and the beer's been released from the can. A sour beer like a gose would be a great pick, since a tart dressing would complement the sweet flavors of the fruit better than the bitterness of an IPA or the heaviness of a stout.