Easy Mango Avocado Salad

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This light and flavorful summer salad is an easy and versatile recipe to celebrate mango season! With a delicious mix of savory and sweet ingredients, this easy mango avocado salad recipe will be a repeat request from your people.

The mango ban in the house has been lifted!!! It’s all thanks to this mango avocado salad recipe, darlings. We all know there’s nothing like a good salad recipe when it’s hot outside. Why turn on the oven when you can create a colorful and flavorful meal by mixing a few ingredients?

But when a recipe makes your “mangos are ew” husband say “This is good, we should make it again.” Instant save. Mic drop, whatever. You don’t even need my notes for this flavor party in your mouth!

But since Google requires words to rank the recipes for us smaller sites, it’s time for some tips and tricks and notes. Also, if you wanted to know why bloggers write long posts, it’s SEO. We want to share our recipes, but no one will find them if we don’t rank and we won’t rank without the long posts. So that’s fun.

Back to salad, yes?

Easy Mango Avocado Salad Ingredient Breakdown

This recipe falls squarely into the “summer salad” category because using fresh mangos is basically a must. I enjoy frozen mango and use it in recipes like this mango lassi. But frozen fruit doesn’t thaw to the same consistency as fresh. Thawed frozen mango can feel a little slimy, and you don’t want that in this salad.

Mango season is May through September. That’s plenty of time to enjoy this salad as it takes you from Memorial Day to Labor Day here in the United States, with all the glorious warm days of summer in between.

For avocados, I use the smaller Hass avocados. That’s what you’ll find in most stores around the country, barring certain regions. If you’re in an area – like Florida – where they also sell the large smooth-skinned avocados, don’t use those. They’re fine, but the texture and flavor aren’t the same and you’ll end up with an “off” ratio of avocado to mango in the salad. Don’t let the “lower in fat” stickers get you. Hass avocados work best.

I like to use red onion because it’s prettiest and the flavor is good in the salad. If you can’t find red onions that look good, substitute sweet onion, like Vidalia. If you can’t find red or sweet onions, have a heart-to-heart with the produce manager. Then, use yellow onion but start with half the suggested amount because the flavor is much sharper than red or sweet onion. This is not an onion salad.

Buy a can of beans. Unless you’re organized enough to have pre-cooked frozen beans you can thaw, rinse, and use, canned is easy. I use cannellini beans or Great Northern white beans for this recipe because the mild flavor pairs beautifully with the mango, avocado, and fresh cilantro.

There is no substitute for fresh cilantro. In a pinch, you could use culantro, cilantro’s better-for-cooking and heat-resistant cousin. If you really hate cilantro, you can skip it, but it does add a lovely flavor here.

Garlic, lemon juice, and olive oil are the salad dressing trifecta. That’s all.

A few recipe notes…

The timing for making this salad is pretty flexible. For Fourth of July this year I made it shortly before serving, mixing in the avocado just before setting the salad out on the buffet line. All family members present (immediate and extended) enjoyed it! The flavors went together well and not much was left over from a double batch.

If you have a little time, you can prepare this in the morning for your event and let the flavors blend in the fridge for a bit before serving. For the most beautiful salad, don’t add the avocado until the last minute to prevent browning.

That being said, I made this for meal prep one week, and the lemon juice in the dressing does a pretty good job of preventing avocado browning. The salad looked good for about 3 days. It didn’t last beyond that.

This mango avocado salad is my new favorite accompaniment to grilled fish. *chef’s kiss*

Dicing a mango can be tricky! Please be careful when cutting your mangos. The National Mango Board has a really nifty video to help you here. Give yourself room to work.

The exact amount of salt in the recipe is flexible. Start with just 1/4 teaspoon of salt, wait a few minutes, then sample and adjust as needed. You want just enough salt to balance the sweet and savory parts of the salad.

With that, I think it’s time we stop chatting and make some mango salad! We do have a summer to go enjoy now, don’t we darlings?