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!
Reader’s Review
Delicious and low calorie! So refreshing! Best Green one out there.
Linda
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.
Freezing Greens Tip
If you see about to expire spinach on sale (especially organic, pre-washed, in a box), stock up and freeze right in a box. It saves money and is so easy to use. As for kale, wash, remove ribs, coarsely chop and freeze in resealable bags. You can also do the same with regular spinach.
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.
- 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.
- Blend until smooth: Use preset button “smoothie” if you have one, or just blend green smoothie long enough until consistency is to your liking.
Tips for Best Results
- Order of ingredients: It’s worth mentioning again! The best order to blend smoothies are liquid on bottom, frozen fruits and greens on top.
- Don’t under blend: The longer you blend, the more creamy your smoothie will be. Smoothies are already a quick healthy drink to make, don’t attempt to save even more time by under blending it. Always check to ensure there are no chunks of fruit left.
- Follow the recipe amounts: This ensures perfect smoothie consistency that doesn’t end up watery or foamy.
- Enjoy right away: Unless you plan on re-blending your smoothie, drink up!
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
Green Smoothie Recipe
Equipment
Video
Ingredients
- 3 cups water
- 3 cups mango, frozen
- 4 cups baby spinach, washed
- 2 cups kale, washed, ribs removed & coarsely chopped
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.
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
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Hi Olena,
Well I’m not a great smoothie fan but after reading your comments about green vegetable intake I realised I ought to try it!
It was wonderful.
I used fresh products because they are easier to find than the frozen versions.
Now I just have to convince my kids to try it.
Regards,
Nick
Nick! I am so glad you took the plunge and tried it! Hopefully your kids will like it too!
Let’s hope too.
My son turned his nose up to it. His excuse was, it’s too green!
Oh no! It’s green, but it’s so good!
Since having 2 stomach surgeries I have eaten very few vegetables. Mostly living on ‘melt in your mouth’ protein bars. I tried drinking the ‘green’ smoothies from the grocery stores…they taste good but the sugar content is off the charts! This smoothie from ‘O’ is outstanding! Easy to make, fresh ingredients, and the ‘outcome’ is so much better than eating a synthetic protein. Sooo happy I stumbled across this site.!
Haven’t tried yet (cuz I hate kale), but what is this about freezing your fresh spinach??????!!!!!!!!! U know how much spinach I throw out cuz I can’t get it all used???? Please share!
And thank u for all the wonderful, healthy recipes! Between you and WW I’ve got this!!
Hi Debbie! Freezing spinach is so easy. Check out this site which outlines it step by step.
https://unsophisticook.com/how-to-freeze-spinach/
You’ve got this 🙂
Love this recipe.
Hi Olena!
This is such an easy recipe and does taste good! I’m a first time green smoothie maker and I can see me making this regularly. Is adding a little honey or maple syrup ok? Just to sweeten it up a little?
Sure
I like that this recipe is so simple and mangoes are in season right now. I used crushed ice instead of water. I also made another version of this using papayas instead of mangoes. Just because we had an abundance of of papayas at the time. I am trying to find recipes that uses more tropical fruits as apples and berries are not readily available at the time. I am also trying to loose weight after having my 4th child. I am currently trying these recipes.
I make one like it but with the following adds
Put in blender 1/4 cup rolled oats, 2-3 Tbs hemp seeds and blend add water( or almond milk) spinach, frozen pineapple, mango. Other additions -1/2 frozen or fresh banana, chopped soft dates.
Just made this smoothie – hubby had triple bypass 3 weeks ago so am looking for healthy options for breakfast. Palatable as written, but love your idea of chopped dates and oats. I bought frozen mango from food chain store – and they surely weren’t “ripe” as the outer bag stated so my drink tasted more like grass. Not blaming the recipe – blaming false fruit bag labeling. Will try fresh mangos w/ice and various combos till we find just the right heart healthy taste. I subscribe to My Meal Plan through site ifoodreal and LOVE the taste and variety Olena shares. Thanks!!
Very easy and very yummy! Great way for my family to eat the greens that we need to! Thank you!
You are very welcome Stacy!
Love this recipe
Fantastic! Glad you enjoyed the recipe, Judy!
Love all of your recipes ! Ordered the ingredients for the smoothie today! Please keep them coming!
Many thanks for the positive feedback! Please don’t be shy to leave a review or comment on any recipes that you try!
I like this green smoothie because it hides the spinach because i hate spinach but hopefully it going to get my low iron levels haemoglobin back up,thanks for recipe
You’re welcome Jayne!