Being that we are obviously into our smoothies, we often give out smoothie tips and recipes at events and our friends, without much thought. It only recently occurred to us that most of these are second nature to us but could really benefit other people and help them broaden their smoothie horizons.

SO this is the first in a series of smoothie tips which we want to share. Feel free to give us your feedback and let us know if any of these tips…

Like everyone, when we first started making smoothies the first thing we did was went out and bought loads of fresh fruit. We then proceeded in the following days to make smoothies trying to use all the fruit before it went bad.

We always think of Fresh fruit as the best way to enjoy fruits and add them to our smoothies, however this isn’t always the case. In a global supply chain, fresh fruits are available out of season and even in countries where they cannot be grown. Many people don’t even have access to locally grown fresh fruit so have to rely on a complex network of transportation to get. Not great for our carbon footprint.

Consider different formats of fruit: Fresh, frozen, tinned , dried (which breaks into different categories). Fresh is not always the answer!

Preserved fruits and vegetables make sense on so many levels. They are often picked and fully ripened before being preserved, which means you get the best flavour and also don’t have a tight time frame to use them.

Our personal favourite is frozen - almost all fruits and vegetables come in this format, either fully raw or part prepared. They are often referred to as IQF (individually quick frozen) and can come in bulk single flavour or individually proportioned packs. Ideal for smoothies because you can use as much or as little as you like and put the rest back in the freezer.  Also frozen fruit helps keep your smoothie cold with having to add loads of ice. 

Our favourites are: frozen spinach, bananas and raspberries

Tinned Fruit is also a great option with very long shelf lives. The downside seems to be that there isn’t as much variety of fruit in the tinned format. However, for the ones that are available, it’s the best format. A prime example is peaches! It’s hard to find fresh peaches which taste as good as tinned. For smoothies these are great back ups to keep in the cupboard if you have not had a chance to go shopping or are completely out of fruit, there is a good chance that random tin of pears you once bought is still safe to eat!

Our favourites are: Pears and peaches

Dried fruit is usually the most overlooked and many people don’t even consider adding them to smoothies. Now I will caveat that - the reason is they are often often quite solid so blenders can struggle to break them down. There are several formats such as freeze dried and dehydrated fruits. However freeze dried fruits seem to be a very expensive way to go. We would suggest things like dates, prunes, figs, raisins and other dried snacking fruit (cranberries, pineapple etc).

Dried fruit tends to taste sweet but this is just a product of removing moisture, if you find they are not breaking down well in your blender try pre cutting them a bit or allowing them to soak for a few hours or overnight.

Our favourites are: Dates and Prunes

This has ended up being much longer than planned, but we hope this give you some good info to get you started!