Do you ever think about making a smoothie and then immediately dread having to actually make it because it takes a lot of work? Smoothies shouldn’t be something we consider hard work. But they are. The annoyance of the blender getting clogged, fighting for that frozen spinach to keep turning, and then to find that the ingredients stop the blender from blending every two seconds shouldn’t be problems we have to deal with when making a smoothie. What a pain.
Then to actually get it unclogged you go through the hassle of needing to add more liquid and it still doesn’t work. It finally starts showing progress after you have poured 4 times the amount of liquid you ever wanted in there in the first place. This shouldn’t be our experience every time we go to make a smoothie. It shouldn’t feel more convenient to grab a smoothie from your local café. Sure, we have those days when it is, but it shouldn’t be the feeling every time. The time has come to stop our blenders from getting clogged. The answer? Put your ingredients in your blender in a certain order for smooth blending. A smoothie is called a smoothie after all, not a cloggie.
Here are the steps to a smoother smoothie-making process.
Add Your Ingredients in This Order
1. Liquid First.
Your liquid, no matter what it is, should always be the first ingredient that you should start with. This allows your blender to actually work its magic.
2. Powders Next.
For those who are fans of protein powder or other powders like hemp, pea, peanut butter, etc you’ll want to add these ingredients immediately after your liquid. This helps give them the best opportunity to get contact with the liquid to help mix it together, instead of leaving you with clumps.
3. Fresh Fruits and Veggies.
This does not include freshly frozen, we will get to those in a minute. Put the lighter-weight ones in first, so that the heavier ones can help push the lightweight ones into the blades.
4. Follow Next with Your Creamy Ingredients.
Think of things like yogurt, nut butter, etc.
5. Last we Finish Up with Frozen Ingredients (this includes Ice) and Anything Hard (like nuts)
Everything frozen and hard should go in last.
So why does the order of ingredients matter so much?
You want the blades of the blender to be able to start spinning at full speed before heavier, harder ingredients become more taxing. Doing it this way helps avoid a phenomenon called cavitation, which happens when your mix of ingredients is too cold. Cavitation causes an air pocket to form around the blade (we have all seen this before), preventing it from actually doing any blending. The best way to prevent this is to make sure there is plenty of space between your cold, hard ingredients and your liquids at the bottom which is why the above order is the way it is.
Want to give this technique a spin, try our green protein smoothie.
