This powerhouse green smoothie blends savory and sweet flavors with spinach, mango, pineapple and ginger
- 2 Cups Fresh Spinach
- 1/2 Cup Pineapple or use a prepackaged fruit cup with juice
- 1/2 Cup Mango Frozen in 1/2" chunks
- 1 Tablespoon Chia Seeds
- 1 Cup Water
- 1 Inch Fresh ginger Peeled and cut into 4 pieces
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If using a Nutribullet or Ninja, add spinach to the blender jar first (read your blenders directions, some have you pack the blender opposite of this), pack down lightly, add pineapple fruit cup with juice (or dice your own fresh pineapple or use frozen chunks), add partially thawed mango chunks, about half a cup, Chia seeds, grated ginger and finally 1 cup water. Blend for about 1 minute until smooth, but no more than 2 minutes. See the above blog post for recommendations on how to use your blender.
Meal prep - This is a huge time saver, pack individual bags of smoothies before you blend and freeze. Then just pull the baggie out the day you want to enjoy the smoothie and blend away. See post for tips.
Depending on the type of blender will determine what order you put the ingredients into your blender jar. If using a Nutribullet or Ninja, put the ingredients in order as stated in the above recipe. If using a traditional blender, then use that manufacturers instructions. Typically a traditional blender design will have you load the ingredients in the opposite way as above. It has to do with the location of the blades.
Most traditional blenders will not do a good job of pulverizing the spinach and you may end up with a "stringy" smoothie. I experienced this with my old blender, switched and have been happy with the Nutribullet. The only traditional blenders that do a good job on greens that I am familiar with are the VitaMix and the Blendtec, both great options but pricey.
Play the amounts of spinach, fruit and ginger. I like my smoothie to taste more like spinach than the fruit. Others like it opposite. If so use 1 cup spinach and increase each of the fruit to 1 cup each. As far as the ginger I actually double what is in this recipe. But ginger has a real bite and that amount won't sit well with everyone.
And by all means leave the ginger and chia seeds out if you like. Originally I used to just use the spinach, pineapple and mango, that was it and the smoothie was delicious!