The act of making a smoothie is pretty straightforward. You put ingredients in a blender, switch on the blender, and then a beautiful blended mixture forms right before your very eyes. You pour that smoothie in the cup of your choice and then slurp it all down. Those are the basics, but this isn’t amateur hour, folks. We’re here to take your smoothie game into the big leagues. It’s time to become a smoothie pro.
If you’re familiar with our website, you know that we love our smoothies, especially while cleansing. In fact, there’s an entire smoothie section (click here to view those recipes). We understand that the act of making a smoothie isn’t difficult, but there are tips that can save you time and increase the quality of your smoothies. Whether you’re a green smoothie fanatic or simply testing the smoothie waters, you’ll benefit from these smoothie hacks.
Prep The Night Before
Some people are familiar with overnight oats or chia pudding, both of which you make at night, refrigerate, and then consume the next morning. You can apply this same technique to your smoothies. Simply add all of the smoothie ingredients to your blender pitcher at night and place it in the fridge. Remove it from the fridge in the morning, add any last minute ingredients, and blend away. Note that you should add any ingredients that brown (apples, avocados, or oats) or liquids (water, freshly made juice, or nut milk) right before you blend the smoothie in the morning.
Use Your Ice Cube Trays
There’s no reason to dilute your smoothies, which contain refreshing fruits and vegetables, with water. Most smoothie recipes call for ice cubes to help thicken smoothies, but they actually dampen the overall flavor. Instead of water, fill your ice trays with liquids that will enhance your smoothie recipes. Add coconut water, almond milk, coconut milk, or even herbal tea to ice cube trays and freeze them. When you make your smoothie, pop a few of those cubes in and use half the amount of liquid. It’ll be great! Additionally, you can pour leftover smoothies into ice trays and freeze them for future smoothies.
Start Slow
People don’t typically think about the blending speed when making smoothies, but that’s because they aren’t smoothie pros. They just press that button and rev it up to high gear. You can’t go from zero to sixty in a split second when you make smoothies, okay? If your blender has variable speeds, start blending on the lowest speed and then slowly increase to high speed. This helps the ingredients process more evenly. If you don’t have variable speeds, start pulsing in short bursts before turning it on full blast.
Make Smoothie Bags
This is the best timesaving tip we can offer. Dedicate one hour of your week to wash, chop, and divide your smoothie ingredients into individual freezer bags for the upcoming week. You can vary the ingredients so that you don’t drink the same smoothies every day. Perhaps one bag contains sliced bananas, spinach, blueberries, chia seeds, and chopped mango, and another bag contains dehydrated coconut, strawberries, kale, cubed pear, and oats. Doing this smoothie prep work can save you tons of time in the morning. Simply remove a bag from the freezer, add the ingredients to your blender, add some liquid, and blend away! Check out this smoothie prep for inspiration.
Change Up The Ingredients
Nobody wants to drink the same smoothie every day. You’ll end up hating smoothies if you use the same ingredients over and over again. Additionally, using the same ingredients limits your nutritional intake. Think about other ingredients for your smoothies. Beets, carrots, celery, cucumber, avocado, broccoli, grapes, peaches, papaya, and chard are excellent smoothie ingredients with amazing nutritional profiles.
