Carrot-Pineapple Salad is one of my favorite spring and summer side dishes. We knew it by another name growing up. My uncle called it Knuckle Salad, which was only fair since he was was often in charge of grating the carrots.
There are many variations in the Carrot-Pineapple Salad genre. Perfectly understandable, it’s not like a cake where the mis-measuring ingredients can lead to a horrible outcome. You put some things that are yummy separately into a bowl and mix them up so they can taste yummy together.
Carrot-Pineapple Salad aka Knuckle Salad
Ingredients
2 cups grated carrots (about 4 medium carrots)
8 oz fresh or canned pineapple, chopped into tidbits
1/2 to 1 cup raisins, plumped
1/4 – 1/2 cup mayonnaise
Directions
Plump the raisins by soaking them in hot water. (Warning: there is nothing attractive about raisins plumping. I took a photo of just the bowl of raisins and decided it would be better to have them in a group ingredient shot so they didn’t scare anyone. Even lurking in the background, they’re still pretty horrifying, but holy cow do they taste good in the salad.)
Grate your carrots. I like mine very fine, but you might like yours a little meatier. Use a food processor if you’re doubling the recipe. The temptation is there to buy a bag of pre-shredded carrots, but unless you are pressed for time, stay away. The freshness makes the flavor. Bagged shredded carrots aren’t giving up their sweet carrot juice when it’s all stirred together.
Chop up your pineapple, or open a can of tidbits and drain them. Back when this recipe was on our family’s menu, a fresh pineapple at the supermarket was reasonably exotic, so my mom relied on cans. Now, use fresh if you can because it’s so darned good. Chop your pineapple as small as you like them, make the size proportional to gauge of your carrot shred. You don’t want big hunks with fine shreds from a texture perspective.
Drain your raisins and mix everything together.
Stir in between 1/4 and 1/2 cup of mayonnaise to taste. If you like a lighter salad, less mayonnaise. I like mine swimming in mayo, just like Mom used to make. Your ingredients are going to add moisture too, so go slow.
This version of Carrot-Pineapple salad is best served the day it is made. It tastes great for a 3-4 days, but in terms of eye appeal, it starts to look a bit slimy.
As mentioned before, there are lots of variations on the carrot salad genre out there.
This Grandma’s Carrot Salad recipe minimizes the mayo and adds lemon juice.
This Carrot Raisin Salad (No Mayo) subs a light dressing for the mayo.
This Barefoot Carrot Salad Recipe from Ina Garten adds lemon juice and sour cream and sounds delicious. Ina Garten is to American comfort food what Ralph Lauren is to turtlenecks. They both take something that’s pretty good and elevate it.
If you’re looking for a food pairing…
Carrot-Pineapple Salad is delicious with ham. And you know what else is delicious? This recipe for Ham Salad à la Dot.
