The first green smoothie I ever made tasted like a lawn clipping dissolved in milk. I'd followed
the recipe exactly. What the recipe hadn't told me was that kale and spinach are not
interchangeable, that the order you blend in matters more than the ingredients do, and that a green
smoothie without acid in it is just puréed salad.
Here are the rules that fixed it, and seven blends built around them.
The two rules
Rule 1: Blend the greens with the liquid alone, first
Put your greens and your liquid in the blender by themselves. Run it for a full 45 seconds, until
the mixture is uniformly green with no visible flecks. Then add everything else and blend
again.
Greens have fibrous cell walls and leaf ribs. When you throw them in with frozen fruit, the fruit
gets pulverised first and the leaves just get chopped into small green specks — which is exactly the
texture people describe as “grassy” or “gritty.” Blending them alone in liquid gives the blades
something they can actually break down.
Rule 2: Every green smoothie needs acid and fat
Acid — lemon, lime, pineapple, a tart green apple — cuts through the mineral, slightly bitter
note of leafy greens. Fat — avocado, nut butter, full-fat yogurt, coconut milk — coats your tongue
and rounds it off.
Skip either one and you'll taste the greens. Include both and you mostly won't.
Which greens to use
- Baby spinach — the beginner's green, and honestly the best one. Almost no
flavour, blends to nothing, and two large handfuls disappear entirely into fruit. - Romaine lettuce — even milder than spinach and surprisingly good. Very high
water content, so cut your liquid slightly. - Kale — assertive, slightly bitter, and needs the stems stripped out. Massage
or blend it longer. Start with half kale, half spinach. - Swiss chard — mild leaves, but the stems are earthy. Use leaves only.
- Frozen spinach — works, and it chills the smoothie, but it's more strongly
flavoured than fresh. Use about half as much.
Start at one handful of greens per smoothie and work up. Almost nobody's first green smoothie
should contain kale.
Seven blends
Each makes one large serving. In every one, blend greens plus liquid first.
1. The starter
2 handfuls baby spinach · 1 cup coconut water · 1 frozen banana · 1 cup frozen mango · juice of
half a lime.
If you've never made one before, make this one. Mango is the most effective flavour-mask there
is, and it's sweet enough that nothing else is needed.
2. Green piña colada
2 handfuls spinach · ¾ cup coconut milk (the drinking kind) · 1½ cups frozen pineapple ·
¼ avocado · squeeze of lime.
Pineapple's acidity and the coconut fat do rules 1 and 2 in a single step. Tastes like a holiday
drink and is bright green, which is a strange combination your kids will find hilarious.
3. Apple pie green
2 handfuls spinach · 1 cup almond milk · 1 frozen banana · 1 chopped green apple (frozen if you
can) · ½ tsp cinnamon · 1 tbsp almond butter.
Green apple brings the acid; cinnamon does something disproportionate to how little of it there
is. Leave the apple skin on.
4. Cucumber mint cooler
1 handful spinach · ½ cucumber · 1 cup cold water or green tea · 1 cup frozen pineapple ·
6 mint leaves · juice of half a lemon · ¼ avocado.
The lightest one here. Genuinely refreshing rather than filling — treat it as a drink, not a
breakfast, unless you add yogurt.
5. Chocolate green (the one for sceptics)
2 big handfuls spinach · 1 cup milk · 1½ frozen bananas · 2 tbsp cocoa powder · 1 tbsp peanut
butter · 2 pitted dates.
Cocoa is dark enough to hide the colour and strong enough to hide the flavour. This is the one to
hand someone who insists they hate green smoothies, ideally without mentioning the spinach until
after.
6. Berry green
2 handfuls spinach · 1 cup milk · 1½ cups frozen mixed berries · ½ cup Greek yogurt · 1 tbsp
ground flaxseed.
Fair warning: berries plus greens produces a murky brown-purple. It tastes excellent and looks
terrible. Drink it from an opaque cup.
7. Kale, when you're ready
1 handful destemmed kale + 1 handful spinach · 1 cup coconut water · 1 cup frozen pineapple ·
½ frozen banana · ¼ avocado · juice of a whole lime.
Note how much acid this one carries. That's not incidental — kale needs it.
Why it turns brown, and what to do
Green plus red or purple fruit gives you brown. It's just colour mixing, and it has no effect on
taste. If the colour matters to you — and if you're serving these to children, it does — stay with
yellow and green fruit: mango, pineapple, banana, green apple, kiwi, pear.
A green smoothie also darkens if it sits. Oxidation dulls the colour within about twenty minutes.
Lemon juice slows it noticeably, which is a second reason for rule 2.
Making it a meal
Fruit and greens alone won't hold you for long. Add half a cup of Greek yogurt, a scoop of
protein powder, or a couple of tablespoons of oats to turn any of these into breakfast — the
approach is covered in more detail in our
high-protein smoothie guide, and the
underlying ratio is in our 3-2-1 smoothie formula.