A vegetable smoothie is almost too good to be true. Not only are they cold and refreshing, but they are also packed full of nutritious veggies and fruits.
For busy weekday mornings, there’s nothing better than a delicious cold veggie smoothie. If you don’t eat breakfast or prefer a light breakfast, veggie smoothies are the way to go. And veggie smoothies aren’t just great for adults. Kids and teens also enjoy them, especially if you sweeten them with some apple juice.
And these days, there are perhaps hundreds of fruit and veggie smoothie recipes out there you can try. Best of all, these veggie smoothie recipes are super easy to make.
Vegetable smoothies are a popular and nutritious way to consume a variety of vegetables in a single, delicious drink. They have gained popularity in recent years due to their numerous health benefits and versatility. The ease of preparation, combined with their vast potential for customization, makes vegetable smoothies a staple for many households.
These nutrient-dense beverages can provide essential vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants from a colorful assortment of vegetables. Incorporating a mix of leafy greens, vegetables, and even fruits can create a well-balanced smoothie that contributes to overall wellness. Moreover, vegetable smoothies can help individuals achieve their daily recommended servings of vegetables, a crucial component in maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
As a convenient and customizable option for incorporating more vegetables into one’s diet, vegetable smoothies appeal to those with busy lifestyles, picky eaters, and health-conscious individuals alike. The endless combinations of flavors and ingredients allow for creativity in the kitchen, keeping both taste buds and bodies satisfied with wholesome, natural nourishment.
Understanding Vegetable Smoothies
Vegetable smoothies provide a convenient and delicious way to consume a variety of vegetables. They can be easily incorporated into your daily diet, providing essential nutrients and helping to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Benefits of Vegetable Smoothies
Increased Nutrient Intake: Vegetable smoothies are an excellent way to increase your daily servings of vegetables. Consuming a diverse range of vegetables provides essential vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants necessary for optimal health.
Better Digestion: Blending vegetables breaks down the cellular walls, making it easier for your body to absorb nutrients and release enzymes needed for digestion.
Weight Management: Vegetable smoothies, when used as a meal replacement or snack, can help control calorie intake and lead to weight loss, especially when combined with a balanced diet and regular exercise.
Food Combinations for Optimal Nutrition
When crafting your vegetable smoothie, consider these food combinations to ensure you get the most nutrients from your drink:
Leafy Greens + Citrus Fruits: Adding citrus fruits, such as oranges or lemons, to a smoothie with leafy greens like spinach or kale can enhance the absorption of iron and calcium.
Example: Kale, orange, and banana smoothie.
Cruciferous Vegetables + Healthy Fats: Pairing cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli or cauliflower, with healthy fats like avocado or flaxseed can aid in the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, E, and K.
Example: Broccoli, avocado, and cucumber smoothie.
Red Vegetables + Black Pepper: Combining red vegetables, like tomatoes or bell peppers, with a pinch of black pepper can boost the absorption of lycopene, a powerful antioxidant.
Example: Tomato, bell pepper, and black pepper smoothie.
Remember to experiment with different vegetable and fruit combinations to create a nutrient-dense and flavorful smoothie that suits your taste preferences.
Basic Ingredients and Equipment
Blenders and Their Functions
A good blender is essential when it comes to making vegetable smoothies. They are specifically designed to blend and pulverize ingredients such as greens, fruits, and other vegetables. Some blenders come with multiple speed settings, allowing you to control the thickness and consistency of your smoothie. It is important to choose a blender that meets your needs and desired results.
Choosing the Right Ingredients
When creating a vegetable smoothie, start with a base of leafy greens such as kale or spinach. These provide essential nutrients and a vibrant green color. Next, add some veggies and fruits for texture and natural sweetness. Here are a few suggestions to get you started:
Greens
Veggies
Fruits
Kale
Carrots
Apples
Spinach
Cucumbers
Berries
Remember to experiment with various combinations and adjust the quantities to suit your taste preferences. With the right blend of ingredients and a high-quality blender, you can make delicious and nutritious vegetable smoothies in no time.
You might think of avocado as something best eaten with some of your favorite Mexican dishes, like tacos and burritos. Maybe you think of it as cool and creamy guacamole. But, there’s so much more potential in avocados than meets the eye.
This recipe for avocado smooth will have you looking at your avocados with renewed admiration. Best of all, it only requires five simple ingredients and takes the same amount of time to make!
The ingredients include avocados, milk, spinach, frozen banana, frozen mango (or pineapple, or peaches), and ice.
You can also add two or three teaspoons of honey to sweeten things up a bit and add ingredients like collagen, protein powder, flaxseed, or bee pollen to give it an extra nutritional boost!
Also, you only want to use soft and ripe avocados.
Broccoli is a fantastic veggie loaded with incredible nutritional value, and this simple broccoli smoothie recipe is an excellent way to get your daily dose of this wonder food.
Some of the beneficial nutrients in broccoli include calcium, vitamin C, phosphorous, iron, potassium, zinc, and much more! Plus, broccoli offers some of the highest amounts of protein of any vegetable. One cup provides a whopping two grams of protein.
Best of all, this smoothie is naturally sweetened, dairy-free, vegan, and makes the perfect breakfast or healthy snack!
Ingredients for this veggie drink include unsweetened almond milk, dairy-free plain yogurt, broccoli, spinach, frozen banana, and frozen mango.
Some tips for this recipe include using broccoli florets since they are not as tough as the stems.
This super green smoothie, nicknamed the “Happy Green Monster,” brings together two of the most potent greens on the planet along with other delicious ingredients to create a powerhouse smoothie sure to super-charge your day.
The ingredients include kale, spinach, pear, coconut water, lime juice, agave syrup, and coconut milk.
Together, these ingredients indeed form one tasty monster that delivers more health benefits than you can shake a stick at.
You’ve got tons of anti-inflammatory and antioxidants just from the pear alone. And coconut water is excellent for hydration.
And we honestly can’t even begin to list all of the healthy benefits of kale and spinach (seriously, that’s probably an entire book).
Thanks to the sweetening ingredients such as pear, coconut milk, and agave, this smoothie doesn’t have an overwhelming veggie flavor and balances out nicely.
When it comes to pumpkins, the first things that come to mind for most folks are Halloween and pies. Of course, during the fall, you can find just about anything you can imagine in pumpkin spice, from candles to breakfast cereal. However, this pumpkin recipe brings America’s favorite giant squash to life in a whole new way.
The ingredients for this recipe include pumpkin puree, banana, ice, vanilla yogurt, pumpkin pie spice, agave nectar (or honey), milk, and whipped cream and nutmeg for garnish.
This creamy, sweet blend will taste like pure heaven if you really love pumpkins. Plus, like most smoothies, it’s super quick and easy to throw together.
And if you don’t mind a bit of alcohol, a splash or two of Amaretto takes this smoothie to new dimensions. You can also get non-alcoholic almond liqueur for the same great taste.
If you’re looking for a smoothie that’s as cool as a cucumber, you can’t do much better than this cucumber smoothie!
This recipe only has a few ingredients: cucumber, frozen banana, almond milk (or water) frozen peach, and thinly chopped parsley.
You can also go with a fresh apple in addition to or in substitution for a banana. And the recipe calls for a banana that’s been frozen for over three years, which we are almost certain is meant to be “recipe humor.”
We definitely recommend using almond milk for this recipe, although we found coconut milk works as well,. It just gives it a hint of coconut flavor if you’re into that sort of thing.
The hint of parsley is a nice touch, but if you’re not a fan, you can always go with a touch of mint or celantro for some spice.
Over the years, kale has become the unofficial heavyweight champ of greens. There are just so many nutritional benefits to incorporating this legit “superfood” into your diet. It’s crazy!
However, many are put off by its relatively strong flavor. But, with this smoothie recipe, you can get your daily dose of kale without enduring its sometimes overpowering veggie flavor.
The recipe calls for kale leaves, banana, pear, water (or coconut water), frozen peaches, frozen mango, Greek yogurt, and honey (optional).
I successfully used coconut milk instead of coconut water, as the milk gave it a creamier texture. You can also substitute the pear for an apple or pineapple.
One of the great things about fruit and vegetable smoothie recipes is that you can always remix them and create something totally new. For instance, I added a few mint leaves, and the flavor was just mind-blowing!
Beets had always been a veggie I loved ever since I was a kid. My family and I used to eat canned beets with a bit of salt and pepper, and they were delicious!
This beet smoothie recipe brings together the flavor of roasted beet, frozen banana, unsweetened coconut milk, pomegranate powder, Amazing Grass Berry Green Superfood (or your favorite berry-flavored protein-energy powder), and flaxseed (or chia seed) to create a delicious treat.
Beets themselves have numerous health benefits. They contain potassium, vitamin C, potassium, vitamin B6, iron, manganese, folate, and two grams of fiber.
They can also help fight inflammation, high blood pressure, improve digestive health, support better brain health, improve athletic performance, and might contain anti-cancer properties.
Carrots are sweet and crunchy root veggies that offer unique flavors in juice form. But, when juiced, you lose many valuable properties such as fiber. This carrot smoothie recipe gives you the best of both worlds and other delicious flavors.
The recipe calls for carrots, apple, grated ginger root, lemon juice, ice, and honey.
The combination of these ingredients is something else! The ginger gives it that little extra that genuinely transforms it into a super-smoothie.
This makes for a fantastic breakfast smoothie and gets your day going with nutritional vitamins and minerals such as vitamin A, beta-carotene, calcium, vitamin K, and vitamin C.
Plus, ginger offers benefits such as anti-inflammatory properties, antioxidant effects, treating nausea, assisting weight loss, fighting osteoarthritis, lowering blood sugar, reducing the risk of heart disease, and treating chronic indigestion.
Spinach has consistently been recognized as one of the most potent superfoods out there, and for a good reason.
This leafy green contains magnesium, calcium, and iron, along with a host of other vitamins. Plus, spinach can reduce the risk of cancer, reduce blood sugar, aids bone health, aids weight loss, improve eyesight, have anti-inflammatory properties, helps your body relax, is suitable for brain health, is great for your skin, and help prevent heart attacks!
The ingredients for this recipe include baby spinach, a fuji apple core, frozen pineapple chunks, chia seeds, and unsweetened almond milk.
We also found that coconut milk works as well in this recipe. And the taste is absolutely amazing! You almost don’t even taste the spinach, and it has a very tropical flavor.
You just can’t say enough about the power of celery. This long, crunchy, potent veggie has benefits most folks swear by. We still enjoy making a gallon of celery juice every week.
However, just as with most veggies, you lose a lot of valuable fiber when juicing. This is why we also love this delicious recipe for celery smoothies.
The ingredients in this smoothie include celery, baby spinach, green apple, frozen banana, avocado, lemon juice, freshly grated ginger, and vanilla extract.
By far, this is one of the most flavorful and delicious smoothies you’ll ever try. The vanilla extract and ginger bring a new dimension to this drink, and the green apple also adds a very distinct tart and sweet flavor.
Sweet potatoes are another veggie that’s seen a surge in popularity these days as many folks are beginning to appreciate their nutritional value and delicious taste.
This recipe uses sweet potatoes, water, vanilla protein powder, roasted cashews, cinnamon, and sea salt to create an unbelievably delicious treat.
You can also discover more incredible vegetable smoothie recipes in the video below.
Cassie brings decades of experience to the Kitchen Community. She is a noted chef and avid gardener. Her new book "Healthy Eating Through the Garden" will be released shortly. When not writing or speaking about food and gardens Cassie can be found puttering around farmer's markets and greenhouses looking for the next great idea.
