Make It Yourself: The Ultimate Guide to Making Protein Smoothies

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

If for some reason you do not have the time or desire to eat your calories, you can drink them. We've put together a complete guide to making smoothies. How to combine vegetables and fruits in one cocktail, sweeten the drink, leaving it low in calories, and what a blender should be that will best prepare a shake, you will find out right now.

Choosing the liquid part of the cocktail

Smoothies are crushed ingredients mixed with any liquid part: cow milk, rice, coconut or soy milk, green or red tea, ice, or at worst, water.

The amount of liquid added to the smoothie determines how thick and rich the drink will be. If you are making a smoothie for the first time and do not know what consistency the finished product will have, start with 200-250 ml of water or milk. If the drink is too thin, add frozen yogurt or ice cubes.

Add fruit

Any fruit can be added to smoothies, including frozen or canned. The latter, however, contain quite a lot of sugar. On the one hand, this is good - you don't have to sweeten the smoothie. On the other hand, this option is not suitable for those who strictly monitor the percentage of subcutaneous fat.

Raspberries, strawberries, lingonberries, bananas, pineapples, peaches, apples and mangoes - fruits are rich in minerals and vitamins and are the main flavor component of the drink.

Add vegetables

If you don't like eating vegetables, drink them. Many classic green smoothies have lettuce leaves such as iceberg, kale (kale) or spinach added to them. You can add radishes, tomatoes or cucumbers, but it is worth remembering that less water needs to be poured into such cocktails - there is enough of it in vegetables. Vegetable powder or packaged fiber works well for sports drinks.

Some nuts for texture and spices for flavor

If you are going to drink a smoothie to replace one or two meals, you need to make it high in calories. To do this, you can add peanut butter, sunflower seeds, granola, or coconut to the mixture. If the drink is intended to be sweet, season it with cinnamon. If, when making a smoothie, there are more vegetables in the mixture than fruits, use paprika, salt or pepper.

Choosing a sweetener

You can add sweets to smoothies in two ways: high-calorie and dietary. Depending on your goal, you can use light stevia or agave nectar, or something higher in calories like honey or jam.

Moving on to the main thing - protein sources

Converts added protein from a regular to a sports smoothie. Vegetable smoothies can contain non-fat or Greek yoghurts without sweeteners, tofu, or Adyghe cheese.

If your smoothie is meant to be fruity, whey or casein proteins, which you can buy at any sports nutrition store, are great. This protein will be the tastiest and most complete in terms of amino acid profile, but it can make the mixture much thicker than intended. In this case, you need to add about 100 ml of your chosen "solvent" - water or milk.

How and what to cook

Now it's time to put all the selected ingredients in the blender. Globally, blenders are divided into submersible (when the manual chopper is placed in a special measuring cup) and stationary (in which the blender blades are installed in the mixing bowl).

Hand blenders are cheaper, do their job well and take up little space. The only thing to keep in mind when choosing a blender is not to use the one with plastic blades. Usually these are the cheapest models, which fail after two or three chopping of nuts or ice.

Stationary blenders are ideal for making smoothies, but they cost two to three times the price. Here it is important not to go to the other extreme and not spend 20-30 thousand rubles on a blender: for making smoothies or other home culinary tasks, you can do without programmable models. Pay attention to the volume of the bowl: the larger it is, the more different products can be added to the smoothie.

Several proven smoothie recipes

1. Protein smoothie with cocoa, coconut milk and avocado

Ingredients:

• 1 scoop of chocolate protein
• 1 cup coconut milk
• 1 ripe avocado
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• a handful of ice;
• sweetener to taste.

Preparation

Mix the ingredients in a blender for 15-30 seconds.

2. Protein smoothie with pumpkin, casein and cinnamon

Ingredients:

• 2 scoops vanilla casein;
• 100 g of peeled raw pumpkin;
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 400 ml of water.

Preparation

Mix the ingredients in a blender for 45-60 seconds.

3. Protein smoothie with lettuce and almond milk

Ingredients:

• 5–7 large leaves of lettuce;
• 1/2 cup frozen blueberries
• 1 scoop vanilla protein
• ½ glass of almond milk;
• 3-4 ice cubes.

Preparation

Mix the ingredients in a blender for 30–45 seconds.