Green Smoothie

Healthy, low calorie, nutrient dense Green Smoothie recipe with 3 simple ingredients is sweet, creamy and delicious! It’s easy to prepare, tasty to consume and your entire family will enjoy!

This is a very basic green smoothie we make all-the-time. Over the years, I tried to make my green smoothie as healthy and trendy as possible with ingredients like chia seeds and turmeric and never followed a recipe.

What I ended up with was “a surprise smoothie” that was too bitter, too sour or too sweet. Kids wouldn’t drink it and my husband couldn’t make it because “only I knew the recipe”. Finally, I decided to act like a responsible parent and create the best green smoothie recipe everyone will drink, the one that tastes good!

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

• Minimal ingredients: It contains 6 cups of leafy greens and is made with 3 simple ingredients plus water.
• Powerful nutrients: Vegetables like kale and spinach make this healthy smoothie recipe full of nutrients, vitamins, antioxidants and fiber. Kale is high in vitamin C and spinach contains folate and vitamins A and K.
• Creamy: Just like in mango ice cream, frozen mango adds natural creaminess and sweetness to this vegetable smoothie.
• Budget friendly: Stock up on fresh spinach and kale when it’s on sale, and freeze for convenient green smoothie later.

Ingredients for a Green Smoothie

• Frozen mango: Mango is one of sweetest tropical fruit that balances out bitter taste of greens. Using frozen fruit and not fresh, gives smoothie its creamy texture. You can replace it with frozen pineapple, it’s just less sweet. I personally find banana doesn’t add the same creaminess or flavor but you can use it.
• Spinach: It’s a sweet-er leafy green with mild taste. I like to use organic spinach, pre-washed baby spinach from the box. I would not replace it with anything as it offsets bitter flavor of kale.
• Kale: Any type of kale like dinosaur aka lacinato, green, or purple kale works. Just remove the bitter rib cage. And always add more spinach than kale. Swap with swiss chard, power greens blend, or collard greens.
• Water: The liquid base. Instead of water you can also use coconut water, unsweetened almond milk or oat milk, orange juice. This will change the nutrition though and all depends on your health goals.

How to Make a Green Smoothie

The blender you use to make a green smoothie matters. To the point whether you will drink green smoothie or not, especially when it comes to kids. It has to be a high-speed blender that makes smoothies smooth. I use Blendtec and Vitamix is great too.

1. Add ingredients to a blender in exact order: Water, frozen mango, spinach and kale. An order of liquid, frozen fruit and greens last, ensures heavy frozen fruit will get blended with liquids first and blender won’t cavitate.
2. Blend until smooth: Use preset button “smoothie” if you have one, or just blend green smoothie long enough until consistency is to your liking.

Add-Ins and Variations

• Extra protein: Add just a small scoop of protein powder not to make smoothie too thick. Add 1/4 cup Greek yogurt or cottage cheese, 3 tablespoons of peanut butter or almond butter or even raw almonds like I do in almond smoothie.
• Fresh fruit: Can use instead of frozen fruit but add 1/2 – 1 cup ice for more creamy and pleasant green smoothie texture and taste.
• Healthy fats additions: Add 1 tablespoon of ground flaxseed, chia seeds or hemp hearts. A quarter of avocado is great too!
• 1 teaspoon additions: Turmeric, matcha powder, fresh ginger.
• More sweet: You can always add honey or maple syrup to taste.

How to Store and Meal Prep

Store: If you have leftovers, you can refrigerate in glasses or a blender jug for up to 24 hours. If refrigerated in a jug, I give it another quick blend before serving. It’s not as good as fresh but is pretty decent.

Meal prep: The best way to meal prep it is to make smoothie packs! In freezer safe bags, pre-portion your fruit, kale and spinach. All that is left to do in the morning is add your water to the blender, grab a pre-prepped veggie smoothie bag and blend.

More Healthy Smoothie Recipes to Try

• Strawberry smoothie
• Almond smoothie
• Red smoothie

5 from 51 votes

Green Smoothie Recipe

By: Olena Osipov

Healthy, low calorie, nutrient dense Green Smoothie recipe with 3 simple ingredients is sweet, creamy and delicious! It's easy to prepare and tasty to consume.

Prep: 5 minutes mins

Total: 5 minutes mins

Servings: 4 servings

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Equipment

• Blender

Video

Ingredients 

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• ▢ 3 cups water
• ▢ 3 cups mango, frozen
• ▢ 4 cups baby spinach, washed
• ▢ 2 cups kale, washed, ribs removed & coarsely chopped

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Instructions 

• In a powerful blender, add ingredients in the order listed above (don’t change): water, mango, spinach and kale.
• Press “smoothie” button or blend until smooth. I like to blend more after “smoothie” cycle for a super smooth smoothie. If your blender isn’t powerful enough, just pause, stir and blend more.
• Enjoy! What I love about this smoothie is that it doesn’t separate much and tastes delicious even the next day.

🎉 Last step! If you made this recipe, please leave a review and let us know what you think!

Notes

• Store: Refrigerate in glasses or blender’s jug for up to 24 hours. If refrigerated in a jug, I give green smoothie another quick blend. Easy-peasy.
• Meal prep: Make smoothie packs by pre-portioning your fruit, kale and spinach in freezer safe bags.

Nutrition

Serving: 1glass, Calories: 85kcal, Carbohydrates: 20g, Protein: 2g, Fat: 1g, Saturated Fat: 0.2g, Sodium: 39mg, Fiber: 3g, Sugar: 17g

Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.

Did you make this recipe?Mention @ifoodreal or tag #ifoodreal!