If you’ve been trying to find a healthy and delicious appetizer, side dish, or dessert for your next family dinner or summer cookout—grilled fruit is the answer. Grilled fruit kabobs are beyond easy to make and loaded with fresh, vibrant flavors. I had to experiment with tons of fruit combinations before stumbling across this one. Trust me, you’re going to want to try this one out.
With a few delicious fruits, fresh lime juice, and honey or maple syrup, you can make the best grilled fruit kabobs in just 10 minutes. Serve them up alongside classic picnic fare favorites like burgers, grilled chicken, pasta salad, and potato salad. If you’re serving this dish as a dessert, pair it with your favorite yogurt dip, and thank me later!
What You’ll Need
Let’s talk about the key ingredients you’ll need to make this grilled fruit kabobs recipe.
- Fruit: You can use any firm fruits you like for your kabobs. My go-to fruits of choice include watermelon, pineapple, mango, strawberries, and bananas.
- Lime Juice: The acidity in fresh lime juice helps to enhance the flavors and prevents your fruit kabobs from browning too quickly.
- Honey: This helps to bring out the natural sweetness of the fruits while ensuring that they get nice and caramelized on the grill.
Recipe Tips for Fruit Kabobs
Here are some of my top tips to help you make the best grilled fruit kabobs:
- If you don’t have honey, you can coat your fruit with maple syrup instead. Don’t skip this step—it’s important for achieving a gorgeous caramelized color and deeper flavor out of your fruit.
- Using wooden skewers? Soak them in ice-cold water for at least 20 minutes before skewering your fruit. This helps to avoid burning your skewers.
- I recommend using larger chunks of fruit to avoid the struggle of having them fall apart as you’re skewering them or suffering from the equally disappointing fate of falling through the grill grates.
- Don’t forget to clean your grill grates before placing your fruit kabobs on top. The last thing you want is a beautiful fruit kabob that tastes like grilled chicken or a hamburger.
Grilled Fruit Variations
The beautiful thing about this summer side dish is that it’s incredibly versatile. After all, fruit can be served with tons of different garnishes, spices, and herbs. If you want to switch things up but aren’t quite sure how to do it, I’ve got you covered with some of my favorite fruit kabob variations.
- Make them hot. Want to spice things up? Try adding some chili powder (Tajin works great!) to your fruit kabobs before tossing them on the grill.
- Tropical flair. For some bold and flavorful tropical flair, sprinkle shredded coconut over your kabobs just before serving them.
- Switch up the fruit. While I'm a sucker for the fruits I’ve chosen for this recipe, you can absolutely swap them out if you want to. Cantaloupe, peaches, pears, and kiwi all make delicious choices.
- Top with herbs. For a fantastic pop of color and fresh flavor, I love garnishing my kabobs with a bright-tasting herb like basil or cilantro.
- Make a grilled fruit salad. For a super easy and delicious barbecue side dish, remove your cooked fruit from the skewers and drop them into a bowl to make a grilled fruit salad.
What to Serve With the Dish
These fruit kabobs are the perfect summer side dish or dessert to enjoy on a hot day. Here are some of my favorite dishes to serve with fruit kabobs:
- For the ultimate summer dessert, serve some grilled fruit atop this Tropical Yogurt Bowl and enjoy your new favorite treat.
- In the mood for healthier burgers? These Easy Ground Chicken Burgers or Easy Salmon Burgers both work great.
- If you want to cook up some steak to go with our kabobs, I recommend this Blackened Steak Salad or Grilled Flank Steak with Balsamic Marinade.
- There’s nothing like some perfectly grilled chicken to kick off a cookout. Try this Grilled Honey Chipotle Chicken or Paprika Lime Chicken.
- Make your own homemade yogurt dip to pair with this tasty dish by combining plain Greek yogurt, lime juice, vanilla extract, and honey or maple syrup.
