Blending and drinking green smoothie is fun for sure, but sometimes small tricks associated with waste and utilization of ingredients can be very helpful. Whether you are green smoothie lover drinking your favorite smoothies since longtime or you are just entering into smoothie lifestyle, these basic green smoothie hacks will help your life easy, productive and save money.
1) Freeze in Ziploc Bags
Staring a smoothie lifestyle is easy, but committing to smoothie lifestyle is hard, especially for those who have a pretty busy work and personal life. I recommend to plan your full week of smoothie recipes on ahead of time, for example you prepare smoothie ingredients on Sunday for entire week.
Cut all greens, fruits and vegetables in small pieces and store them in Ziploc baggies. Make sure to remove air as much as you can when you seal Ziploc bags before you freeze them. By freezing full week of smoothie ingredients will help save time every day. Every evening you can transfer one Ziploc bag from freezer to refrigerator, and then 30 to 60 minutes from refrigerator to kitchen counter in the morning to thaw completely before blending.
2) Alternative for Water
Do not like green smoothie taste? Here is a simple trick that can enhance the flavors of green smoothie. Replace water with coconut water, almond milk or natural fruit juice. You can take half cup juice and half cup water to reduce the artificial flavors.
Personally, I like coconut water and orange juice for my smoothies compared to almond milk or artificial juices.
3) Freeze Leftover Veggies and Fruits
Majority of us, end up buying vegetables and fruits more than we need for a week. Personally, I do not prefer more than a week old, stale greens and fruits. Greens like kale and spinach and ripe fruits you can cut them in small pieces and freeze them in Ziploc bags.
For example, bananas gets ripe very quickly. You can either cut them into small pieces to store in Ziploc bag or make puree and freeze them into ice cubes tray.
4) Leftover Smoothie Cubes
Do you end up making more smoothie than you can drink? Do not get panic, save it for later! Pour leftover green smoothie in Popsicle molds or ice cube trays and save it for later.
Next time when you make smoothie, you can put these green smoothie cubes in blender along with other ingredients.
5) Add Yogurt
Consider adding plain, unsweetened yogurt to your smoothie to give some extra protein boost. I recommend to add half cup in green smoothie or full cup for smoothie bowl.
You must use plain, unsweetened yogurt to maintain the flavor of your green smoothie ingredients. Green smoothie with yogurt can be used for green smoothie meal replacement plan.
6) Steam Dense Ingredients
As we all know vegetables like carrots, beet and sweet potatoes are hard on blender blades. Show some love to your blender blades, steam dense ingredients. Yes, it’s perfectly fine to steam dense vegetables for few minutes and then cut them into small pieces or make puree and freeze them.
If you freeze dense ingredients, make sure to defrost it completely before blending. Usually, transfer all frozen smoothie ingredients at night into refrigerator. Most likely they will be still frozen in the morning, so in the morning remove them from refrigerator and leave it on kitchen counter for 30 to 60 minutes and it will thaw perfectly.
7) Superfood
I recommend to add superfood into smoothie to boost nutrition level in the morning. To enhance the nutrition level you can add almonds, chia seed, flaxseed, cacao powder, goji berries, maca powder and similar ingredients. Superfood will change the texture and taste of your smoothie, but worth using superfood in green smoothie.
I also like to add unflavored whey protein in my smoothie to increase the protein level. I use unflavored Isopure Isolate Whey Protein in my green smoothie, you can also use plant based protein powder. Check out the list of superfoods for green smoothies!
8) Smoothie Bowl
Make smoothie bowl if you do not feel like drinking your green smoothie. Add yogurt and crushed ice to make it thicker instead of liquid. Smoothie Bowl topped with fruits and superfood will be perfect snack or meal replacement.
These are my favorite green smoothie hacks, do you have any? Feel free to share in comments below!
