Sometimes you have to hurry in the morning or you don't always want to stand in the kitchen at lunchtime to cook your lunch. On days like these, smoothies are the perfect addition to your menu. Not only are they delicious, they also contain lots of vitamins, fiber and trace elements. This means they can replace a whole meal. Smoothies are super easy and quick to prepare and you can drink them on the go, at home or in the office. In this article, we present our 5 favorite recipes.
Smoothies - delicious and healthy
As far as flavors are concerned, there are practically no limits and there is nothing that doesn't go together. It's up to your own taste. Basically, you should make sure that you have a good mix of fruit and vegetables or water. Because pure fruit smoothies can quickly become a sugary affair. Fruit does contain natural sugar, but we tolerate this better in moderation :-) So, for a change, we're introducing a few green smoothies that are half vegetable - and therefore also contain more water. If you like it a little creamier and want to replace the smoothie with a solid meal, you can use unsweetened natural yogurt or vegan alternatives instead of water. This way, the smoothies will keep you full for even longer. All recipes are for about two portions.
Raspberry smoothie
- 300 g frozen raspberries
- 150ml water
- Juice of one untreated lemon
- 1 tbsp raspberry syrup or honey to sweeten (if you like it sweet, you can use more syrup)
For this berry smoothie, the raspberries are taken straight from the freezer and pureed with water, lemon juice and raspberry syrup. At the end, you taste whether the smoothie tastes sweet enough. There are big differences in how sweet or sour raspberries are. The more sour they are, the more vitamin-rich they are :-)
Green Detox Smoothie
This smoothie has it all. It contains lots of vitamins, fiber, minerals and antioxidants.
- 200 g frozen leaf spinach
- 5 sprigs of parsley (coarsely chop and remove stems)
- Handful of cashews (soak in water overnight)
- 1 small ripe banana
- 1 pinch of cinnamon
- 100ml water
- 50-100ml milk, e.g. oat milk
Puree the solid ingredients with a splash of water, then gradually add the remaining water and milk. This smoothie is also great to serve as a bowl. Just use a little less liquid.
Ginger-turmeric for the immune system
This smoothie is a real pick-me-up and the perfect mix of spicy and sweet ingredients. You need:
- 2 apples
- 1 small ginger root (approx. 3 cm long)
- 1 small turmeric bulb (approx. 2 cm long)
- 2 oranges
- 1 lemon
- a few sprigs of fresh mint
- 1 tablespoon honey or agave syrup to sweeten
Chop all the ingredients (except for a small amount of mint for garnishing) and puree them in a blender. After seasoning everything with honey or syrup, you can fill the fruit and spice mix into glasses and decorate with a few fresh mint leaves.
Variation 1: If you don’t like or can’t tolerate apples, you can leave them out and use the juice of two oranges instead.
Variation 2: If you like it a little sweeter, add 1-2 carrots to the apple puree.
Watermelon Cucumber Smoothie
This smoothie will cover a good portion of the liquid you need during the day. All the ingredients contain a lot of water. So if you don't always want to drink water, you can use this smoothie every now and then :-)
- 1/3 of a cucumber (approx. 100-150g)
- 600g watermelon pulp
- 1 sprig of mint
- a dash of lemon juice
The cucumber is peeled and cut. Then the pieces are put into the blender together with the pitted watermelon pulp and the lemon juice. The sweetness of the watermelon means no additional sweeteners are needed. The fresh mint leaves that are sprinkled into the glasses at the end round off the taste perfectly. For the gourmets among us, a tiny pinch of chilli or pepper can also be sprinkled over the smoothie at the end.
Green smoothie with pineapple and apple
- 1/4 pineapple
- 1 green apple
- 1/3 cucumber
- 1 handful of spinach
With this green smoothie, you can also leave the pasta in the kitchen cupboard thanks to the vitamin- and fiber-rich ingredients and replace lunch with this power drink instead.
Have fun trying it out :)