This Grilled Peach & Blueberry Salad is the perfect summer salad to have on your table before peach season ends! Grilling the peaches intensifies their natural sugars, giving them a delicious caramelized taste.

Toss in some spiced pecans for a contrast in flavor and some blueberries for an explosion of color! Then add a sweet and spicy homemade balsamic vinaigrette to delight the palate and create the perfect fusion for all your assorted ingredients!

A scattering of microgreens and edible flowers at the end helps bring the salad to a nutritious and beautiful finish. Your guests will leave your table dreaming and talking about your showstopper for days!

My Personal Twist On Salads

Leafy green salads are traditionally not a part of Pakistani cuisine. Our palate is accustomed to richly spiced curries, heavily laden with meat and vegetables. However, I personally love salads and have always felt that there's so much room for creativity when it comes to preparing them.

In order to entice my family, especially my husband, to jump on the salad bandwagon with me I started dabbling with some creative recipes for salads. You'll find that most of my salads on the blog have some hint of spice in them. To coin a popular Southern phrase I love, "This ain't yo' mama's salad"!

Nevertheless, I have tried to stay close to the root of what a salad is and should be by applying a basic principle outlined in foodbusinessnews.net

One of the ways to approach new flavors is to combine the familiar with a twist

The Grilled Peach & Blueberry Salad Recipe

The leafy greens in a salad are usually the least popular part of a salad for most people. To counter that I usually layer mine with delicious seasonal fruits and vegetables.

These add the much needed texture and flavor that takes a salad from blah to sensational! In winter my favorite is citrus avocado salad and in summer it's this incredibly fresh summer fruit salad!

Grilling The Peaches

When making this particular salad, I chose to further enhance the flavor by grilling the peaches. It took very little time and was done on a grill pan on my stove.

After grilling the peaches, I let them sit a while as I prep the nuts and dressing. This allows them to soften a bit more and release some natural juices. The juice can then be mixed in with the dressing so the salad is truly infused with that peach taste.

One or two things to remember are to definitely use some form of fat, or if you're watching calories like I do, nonstick spray. You should ideally leave the peaches on one side for 2-3 minutes before flipping them over in order to get the required grill marks. The fat will prevent them from sticking to the grill pan during this time, as they release their sugars.

The Dressing

If you've made any of my other salads you'll note that I add my own homemade dressings. Whether it's a simple squeeze of lemon juice, some infused oil and balsamic vinegar, or something more complex, you will find that the salad tastes much more refreshing than if you were to use a store bought dressing.

In most of my salads, I try to add some of the bold flavor we're accustomed to in Pakistani cuisine via my dressings. This is where infused oils and vinegars are a huge flavor enhancer. Easily available through many retailers, at times I don't even feel the need to add more than a combination of the two to make a quick dressing.

In this salad, however, I decided to become a bit more adventurous and add a little more spice in the way of crushed serrano chilies. The sweet taste of the honey, balsamic vinegars and fruit balances this well. You're left with a hint of that bold flavor, yet it doesn't overpower the palate.

The Spiced Pecans

Preparing your own spiced nuts in the oven or air fryer adds yet another element of not just flavor, but texture. I always like a little crunch in my salad and nuts are my usual add in for that. Trying to carry that bold flavor a little further, I made my own spiced nuts in my air fryer.

Similar to traditional glazed nuts, these have added spice in the form of paprika. Just like the dressing, the sweet combined with the spicy keeps us close to what a traditional salad topping would taste like, but with a little added kick!

Don't have an air fryer? Make them in the oven instead! Any leftover nuts make a great snack!

Go try this salad while peaches are still in season! It's a perfect and easy side to make for that labor day barbecue! Don't forget to drop a comment and rating to let me know what you think of the recipe!

Grilled Peach & Blueberry Salad

My Personal Twist On Salads