10 healthy smoothie recipes + handy tips

The smoothie trend is not new anymore. It has become clear that smoothies have conquered a steady place in our eating habits. In this article you will therefore find 10 delicious and healthy smoothie recipes. We will start by giving you some handy tips.

What is a Smoothie

A smoothie is a drink of pureed fruit, dairy, ice and/or vegetables. The easiest way to make a smoothie is to use a blender, but you can also use a hand blender. The advantage of a smoothie is that you can easily get a lot of fruits and/or vegetables into your body. And we can use them very well: a big chunk of the modern man does not consume the daily recommended amount of fruits and vegetables.

The basics of a good smoothie

Before we will give you 10 healthy and delicious smoothie recipes, what follows first is a short explanation on how you make a good smoothie. With these basic principles you can vary your smoothies endlessly.

Tips for the perfect smoothie:

• A blender or hand blender is a better idea than a juicer. With a juicer you will of course get more of a juice structure than the structure of a smoothie, but the most important disadvantage of a juicer is that the saturated dietary fibres are lost in the process. That is a waste because these are the ones that are so important and healthy for your body and will, amongst other duties, keep your intestinal flora healthy. 
• Do you want that your smoothie is nice and cold and get a thick structure? Then make sure that (a part of) the fruits that you are using are cold. You can get the ready frozen fruits from the supermarket, you can easily dump these fruits from the package into the blender. You can of course also cut some fruits yourself into pieces and then freeze these in containers or sealed bags. Besides the use of frozen fruits, you can also use ice cubes to make a cold smoothie with a thick structure. 
• Smoothies are often made with milk or yoghurt as one of their main constituents. Are you not really into dairy? Then you can also use vegetable milk or fruit juice instead. 
• Do you want to give your smoothie a hint of the tropics? Use coconut milk instead of dairy or juice.
• Are you often out of time? Then you can freeze smoothie bags. What you do is that you make portion bags with all the ingredients that you want to have in your smoothie. The only thing you then have to do is to empty the contents of the bag into the blender and add liquid of your choice.
• If you like to use orange juice or another fresh juice in your smoothie, but do not have the time or do not want to get your orange press our of the cupboard, then you can also freeze a stock of fresh juice. One afternoon you can then make a whole lot of juice and then freeze this into muffin shapes for example. Then you can easily get a portion of juice from the freezer any time you are feeling like a smoothie.
• A smoothie surely does not only have to consist of fruits and dairy. Vegetables are also great to add to your smoothies. Vegetables and fruit both naturally contain a lot of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, but the advantage of vegetables is that in general they contain less sugar and calories than fruits. Green smoothies are very suitable for when you want to lose weight. Suitable vegetables are for instance: celery, spinach, kale, carrot, red beets and cucumber. 
• Herbs can also be a great addition to your smoothie because they will give your smoothie a surprising taste and they can contain a lot of important nutrients. Examples of fresh green herbs that you can use are: basil, parsley, mint or rosemary. Besides these wonderful herbs you can also use herbs such as: cinnamon, ginger and vanilla to make your smoothie even more delicious and healthy at the same time!
• Do you want to make your smoothie extra nutritious and satisfying? Try adding some extra protein and fats to your smoothie. For instance with protein powder, nuts, seeds, Greek yoghurt or oatmeal. Even cooked quinoa is a good way of making your smoothie extra filling. That sounds odd perhaps, but you won't taste this at all when you are drinking your smoothie.
• Do not be afraid to experiment a little. As long as you do not make real crazy combinations, a smoothie does not fail that easily. When you do not have an ingredient in your kitchen of one of the recipes, then you can simply make up a replacement ingredient of something that you do have. You can also think of extra ingredients that add flavours you would like to taste.
• Of every smoothie recipe you can also make it into a smoothie bowl by simply adding less of your liquid of choice.

What you should not do:

• If you want to make a healthy smoothie, you are best off not adding any ice cream or fruit juice from a package. These products namely contain a lot of refined sugars. When you want to make yourself a sweet treat once in a while, this is of course not a problem. But if your goal is a healthy smoothie, then you are best off choosing some other ingredients. 
• Fruit contains a lot of sugars by itself which means that you would not need to add any extra sugars if you use a lot of fresh fruits. If you want to make a healthy sweet smoothie, you are thus best off adding some extra fruits instead of sugar. 
• Do not just add any kind of protein powder. Protein powders can be a great addition to your eating pattern, but many of these powders contain unhealthy sweeteners. Therefore make sure you check carefully which ingredients are inside the powder before you add it to your smoothie. 
• When you are not sure about the ratios: do not add all the liquid at once that you want to use. You are better off adding a little more each time until you have the right structure. If you add everything at once, you run the risk of your smoothie becoming too thin. 
• If your blender is not so powerful, it could be the case that your machine gets stuck when you add too many frozen and/or solid ingredients. Be aware of this and perhaps check the manual to see if the blender is okay to blend frozen products. The same goes of course for a hand blender.
• When you are in doubt whether or not your blender or hand blender is up for the job, you are best off using less or no frozen products. You could of course also let your ingredients melt, at least partly. Besides it could also help to first add all the liquid with half of the solid ingredients and blend this, and only then add the rest of the solid ingredients. 

Plan of action for the perfect smoothie

You can use this plan of action for every smoothie recipe:

1. Add the (frozen) fruits in your blender.
2. Add any vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs and/or protein powder to the mix.
3. Add the amount of liquid that is stated in the recipe. Are you estimating the amount of liquid that you need yourself? Then always start with a little less fluids and then add a little more later if the smoothie is too thick. A good guideline to know how much liquid you need to add is to add liquid until your fruits (vegetables on top not counted) are just about covered in liquid. 
4. Use the pulse button a few times until the biggest pieces have been crushed. In case you are using frozen ingredients and your blender has an ice crush function, you can use this one.
5. Turn on the blender and let it do its job until your smoothie reaches your desired structure. This is personal: one person may like a very smooth smoothie, whilst the other may be more entertained by a smoothie with more structure.
6. And don't forget to... enjoy!

1: A sweet smoothie of banana and strawberry

• 1 (frozen) banana
• 1 big hand of (frozen) strawberries
• 1 glass of milk
• Optional: add a few spoons of oatmeal

9: Healthy chocolate smoothie

Are you in for chocolate milk but would you rather drink something healthy? This delicious smoothie offers you the solution!
For this smoothie you need:

• 2 bananas
• 1,5 glass milk
• 2 spoons of (raw) cacao powder
• Optional: almonds or macadamia nuts
• Optional 1-3 dates (to make the smoothie sweeter)

10: Healthy cherrie smoothie with flaxseed and chia seed

The cherries add a lot of vitamins and antioxidants to this delicious smoothie while the flaxseed and chia seed will ensure there are enough healthy fatty acids in your smoothie.
For this smoothie you need:

• 1 banana
• 1 big hand of cherries
• 1 teaspoon of flax seed
• 1 teaspoon of chia seed
• 1 glass of milk