Learn to whip up a diet friendly, luscious treat in your blender. On kitchen counters everywhere, blenders are whirring away, full of juice and fresh fruit at the peak of ripeness. Not just a tasty way to achieve your diet and weight loss goal, smoothies are a delicious, light way to increase your fruit intake and these healthy drinks also stand in as creamy low fat breakfasts, sweet afternoon snacks, or even a chilled diet friendly dessert!
To make this low fat drink, you’ll need a sturdy blender and your favourite smoothie ingredients. Keep these 7 tips in mind for the perfect healthy year-round smoothie:
Invest in a good blender
Buy a blender with multiple speeds. Preferably one with a glass canister that allows you to see what’s going on inside with your smoothie. The best blenders let you blend the drink smoothly but also pulse in quick shots.
The sniff test
When doing the food shopping, always smell fruit before you buy it. If it doesn’t smell like anything, chances are it won’t taste like anything either.
Get freezing
Freeze fresh fruit before you blend it. This will create a thick, cool and smooth consistency that’s not watered down by ice plus is completely fat-free and diet friendly! Arrange berries, peach slices or peeled bananas on a baking tray and freeze for 1 and a half hours, until they’re partially frozen (not rock hard).
Layer your ingredients
Put the fresh fruit for your healthy smoothie in the blender first. This may sound odd, but you want the fruit to puree first, so the ice has something to blend into. Ice on the bottom results in needlessly spinning blades.
Let it melt
Half melted ice makes a creamier smoothie without the unhealthy cream! Take slightly more ice than the recipe calls for out of the freezer, let it stand at room temperature for 10 minutes, then drain the water and use whatever ice you need. You get a lush cream flavour, in a healthy diet way!
Choose healthy chilled additions
Use frozen low-fat yoghurt and sorbets. They make terrific additions to smoothies, but they need to be softened slightly for the creamiest drink. Let them stand for 10 minutes at room temperature before using.
Get decorating
Decorate your drinks! Use sugar-free non-food toppers such as paper umbrellas, plastic cocktail gimmicks and tall straws, rather than kilojoule-filled garnishes.
Great advice re the fruit first. Wouldn’t have thought about it, but it totally makes sense. As does the freezing the fruit ❤️ it’s a cool way to avoid lots of ice as I do prefer my smoothie thicker