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.
Lovely recipe and sounds really good are the proportions for one glass/ one person ?
Three cups of mango seams quite a lot.
What the proportion for one person would be ?
This recipe serves 4 people.
LOVE this recipe!!! Found during Staying home to have a healthy non dairy drink. Make it all the time Question…serving is one glass, is that 8 oz? Thanks!
So glad you enjoy it! Yes give or take a few sips, 8 oz would be the average serving size 🙂
Thank you I will certainly try it. Sound good and tasty
Can’t wait to hear how it goes!
I was nervous to try this but SO good!! Been making it everyday!
So glad you enjoyed it!
I am SUPER picky and do not eat veggies, but I love this recipe! I add 5 tbsps of organic peanut butter, and it 100% masks the veggie taste. Thank you!
So glad you enjoy it – veggies and all 🙂
Do you have to drink this right away? Will it stay in the fridge? It says in the comments that the recipe makes four smoothies. I would like to bring this to work, or make a batch and then have a glass a day for the four days in a row. Thanks for any advice!
Hi! It has only been tested being in the fridge 24 hours, then it really tastes better to mix in blender again.
Thank you! I need fast, easy and healthy recipes for my family of 6. I have 4 boys and my husband 🙂. We also work full time and coming home to figure out what to cook can be a challenge. I love how you explain with detail your recipes. Thank you!
So glad you are enjoying the recipes and finding them helpful!
Very nice
Glad you are enjoying it!
Turned out amazing. I used skim milk instead of water. It was like a milkshake. I used a food processor because I don’t have a blender and it still worked. My dad said that it was good. She was surprised. Definitely a keeper.
Excellent to hear of the smoothie success, greens for the win!
Just bought a blender and looking forward to trying this recipe. Can I use frozen kale and/or frozen spinach. If so, how much would I use? I am somewhat of a “newbie” cook and do best with specific instructions. Thanks!
Awesome on the new blender! We always try to list additional tips for recipe success either in the notes of the recipe card or in the post itself 🙂 For frozen kale/spinach since it is more ‘packed’ you might start with a cup less of each green and adjust after you blend and taste to add more etc.