Breakfast
Green machine smoothie
Any morning. The one to make when the week has been light on vegetables.
- Servings
- 1
- Total
- 5 min
- Skill
- Easy
What you need
Ingredients
Making for
1 serving
- Bananas1 each
- Baby spinach2 cup
- Frozen mango chunks1 cup
- Milk1 cup
- Plain Greek yogurt0.5 cup
- Hemp hearts1 tbsp
Quantities scale linearly with servings. Round to the nearest practical amount when shopping.
Steps
- 1
Blend the spinach into the milk alone first
One cup of milk and two cups of spinach, nothing else, blended 30 seconds until it is a smooth green liquid with no visible pieces. This step is the entire recipe. Spinach blended with frozen fruit never fully breaks down, and what you get is a drink with green bits in it.
0:30
- 2
Mango, not berries, and this is deliberate
Add one cup of frozen mango. Mango keeps the drink green and tastes sweet enough to carry two cups of spinach. Berries turn a green smoothie a murky grey-brown that looks like pond water, which is a real reason a perfectly good drink gets refused.
- 3
Banana, yogurt, hemp, then blend smooth
One banana, half a cup of Greek yogurt and a tablespoon of hemp hearts, then 45 seconds until completely smooth. The hemp adds protein and a mild nuttiness without changing the colour.
0:45
Coach's notes
- Two cups of spinach wilts to almost nothing and is genuinely undetectable when it goes in first. Taste it before you decide it will not work.
- Baby spinach is milder than mature spinach. Kale is not a swap here, it is noticeably bitter and much tougher to break down.
- Colour is not a vanity issue with children. Grey-green gets refused and bright green gets drunk, and it is the same drink.
- Frozen mango chunks are in every supermarket freezer aisle and cost a fraction of fresh.