If you love green smoothies AND want to maximize your time and money while making them, then this smoothie prep tutorial is for you! I love buying fresh, in-season produce, yet I don’t want it to go bad before I use it all in my daily smoothie. Meal prep smoothies get me through busy seasons with ease.
Meal prep smoothies are my jam! I love doing smoothie prep in batches so I make one mess at a time and get a week (or month) of ready-to-blend smoothies for my efforts. Today, I’m sharing all my tips and tricks to make smoothies for the week as well as giving you a sample menu and shopping list to get started!
Table of Contents
How to Meal Prep Smoothies for a Week
First, gather the following items: measuring cups, quart bags or canning jars (I like wide-mouth jars best!), a permanent marker, your favorite fruit and leafy greens and either my blog or the Daily Blends Smoothie App. These items will make meal prepping smoothies a breeze. Next:
- Decide which recipes you’ll make for the week and have them on hand. Feel free to use my free 10-Day Smoothie Challenge recipes.
- Slice or cut fruit into chunks. You can also cut fruit into smaller pieces and freeze ahead of time on lined baking sheets or use packaged frozen fruit. This helps keep the fruit and leafy greens from freezing together in a large clump, plus the smoothies blend more easily.
- Label bag or jar lids with recipe name and date. Be specific. You might also want to include how much of which liquid gets blended with each smoothie pack (to have when you’re ready to blend).
- Measure out the ingredients and pack into jars or bags.
- Remove as much air as possible from bags and jars when sealing closed. Pack fruit and leafy greens tightly into the jars and screw on the lids.
- Place in freezer. Don’t pack your bags/containers too tightly together. There should be some air circulation to help the contents to freeze quickly.
When you’re ready to use your meal prepped smoothies, remove smoothie pack from freezer. Add liquid base to container or bag (which helps defrost the fruit slightly). You can also thaw for a few minutes on the counter or in warm water. This helps the fruit and greens come out of the container more easily. Pour into blender and blend until smooth.
Prep smoothies for the week, month, or quarter, whichever length of time fits your time and lifestyle (and space!) best. I took the 7-day Smoothie Challenge inside Daily Blends Smoothie App for recipes and prepped for an entire month!
Tips for Make Ahead Smoothies
- Pick recipes with similar ingredients and buy in bulk. This saves money and cuts down on the number of ingredients needed.
- Buy seasonally! Choosing ingredients that are in season (or better yet, local!) also cuts down on cost. Food has the highest nutrition when harvested during its rightful season. Plus, it just tastes better.
- Help your future self by labeling! Know what that prepped jar needs for the liquid base so that when you are ready to blend, you are prepared.
- Set aside time to prep. Whether it’s on the weekend, Monday morning or Thursday evening, make time for prep. This helps you set yourself up for success.
- If you don’t like to or have time to chop up fresh ingredients then buy frozen! I love getting frozen pineapple and mango from Costco to save myself time. Frozen ingredients are picked at height freshness then flash frozen to preserve as many nutrients as possible.
Have any more tips for meal prepping smoothies? Drop a comment below and let us all know!
Smoothie Prep Menu
If you’re looking for some make-ahead smoothie recipes to get started, try out this plan:
- Beginner’s Luck Smoothie
- Clear Skin Smoothie
- Mango Spinach Smoothie
- Vegan Tropical Smoothie
- Spinach Banana Smoothie
- Island Green Smoothie
- Chia Seed Smoothie
For this round of meal prep smoothies, I stuck with tropical smoothies that have similar ingredients so that I can buy in bulk. Here’s the shopping list to prep the above seven smoothies:
| 7.5 cups Spinach | 3 Bananas |
| 1.5 cups Mango | 1 Avocado |
| 1 Lemon | 2 tbsp Chia Seeds |
| 4 Oranges | 2.75 cups Coconut Water |
| 3 cups Pineapple | 2 cups Water |
If you want to simplify your shopping list further, swap coconut water for regular water (which you don’t need to purchase), and you can meal prep smoothies for a whole week with eight ingredients.
For this list, I would pick up my supplies at Trader Joe’s and opt for frozen mango and pineapple, while choosing fresh for the remaining ingredients. Since avocado is only needed in one recipe, I’d just add it into a few other smoothies for a healthy fat boost.
Common Questions Around Smoothie Prep
Yes! While smoothies start to lose some nutrients about 15 minutes after blending, you can definitely blend one the night before. Just give it a good shake before you start to drink.
Yes! Simply add your fruit and veggies and leafy greens to a mason jar or freezer-safe container and freeze! When you’re ready to make a smoothie, thaw slightly on the counter then dump into your blender along with the liquid of your choice and any superfood boosts you want and blend. This is a great way to make sure your ingredients don’t go bad.
Yes! The key to a meal replacement smoothie is adding in protein and healthy fat. These two components will help you get full and keep you full longer.
Make Ahead Smoothies
Did you know that you can even freeze already blended smoothies? For real! Make sure you use freezer-safe containers and leave space when filling them, as liquid expands when frozen. Put in the fridge the night before you want to drink, carefully defrost in warm water or just toss it into a cooler if you’re taking it with you.
I love smoothie prepping blended smoothies for road trips. They act as ice packs for snacks and are perfectly chilled but defrosted when I’m ready to enjoy them.
Meal Prep Smoothies
Equipment
- freezer
- measuring cups
- quart sized jars or bags
- permanent marker
Ingredients
- 5 cups spinach
- 2 cups kale
- 3 bananas
- 5 oranges
- 3 mango
- 1 pineapple
- 2 cups strawberries
Instructions
- Decide which recipes you'll make for the week and have the recipe on hand. Feel free to use my free 10-day smoothie challenge recipes. For this sample guide I'm using my original Simple 7 Smoothie Guide.
- Slice or cut fruit into chunks. You can also cut fruit into smaller pieces and freeze ahead of time on lined baking sheets or use packaged frozen fruit. This will help keep the fruit and leafy greens from freezing together in a large clump and the smoothies will blend more easily.
- Label bag and jar lids with recipe name and date. Be specific. You might also want to include how much of which liquid gets blended with each smoothie pack (to have when you're ready to blend).
- Measure out the ingredients and pack into jars or bags.Â
- Remove as much air as possible from bags and jars when sealing closed. Pack fruit and greens tightly into the jars and screw on the lids.
- Place in freezer. Don't pack too tightly together. There should be some air circulation to help the contents to freeze quickly.
When ready to use
- Remove smoothie pack from freezer. Add liquid base to container or bag (which helps defrost the fruit slightly). You can also thaw for a few minutes on the counter or in warm water. The fruit and greens will come out of the jar/bag easier too.
- Pour into blender and blend until smooth.Â
Video
Notes
- Smoothie packs will keep for several months in the freezer but are the very best quality when used within 2-4 weeks.
- This sample prep guide uses naturally sweeter fruits. To lower the natural sugar in a smoothie, swap 1 banana with 1/2 an avocado.Â
- If hoar frost forms on the fruit and greens, it is still perfectly safe to consume. It can be rinsed off with lukewarm water.
- Store smoothie packs away from foods with strong odors. Glass jars offer the best protection against odors.
- Pick smoothie recipes with similar ingredients for bulk purchasing and to save money.Â
Great idea, thanks for sharing. I will begin prepping tonight, so that I will be able to make my smoothies a little faster in the mornings! This too will help me to get my measures more accurately, so I make one smoothie instead of two! lol
Great idea!!! I know what I’ll be doing on Sundays while preparing dinner!!! Thanks for the tip!!!
I really like the freeze method.. saving time is what makes this possible for me… my sunday afternoons are chopping and freezing for the week, I am now 3 days ahead of what I need. I hope to be 7 soon. great tips. thanks Stacey
You can do it, Stacey! Seven days ahead would be great!
I’ve been freezing my smoothies for several years and it works great for me. I make enough for the week and pour them into paper cups, add a “lid” of sticky wrap and pop them in the freezer. They transport well to work straight out of the freezer and by mid morning they are thawed to a slushy state. I just give the smoothy a quick stir and enjoy! The frozen smoothies are perfect for my busy schedule.
Awesome, KathyLemmon!
My husband & I swear by our morning smoothies! To make the process easier, (and cheaper!,) we often look to the “bargain bin” of fruit at the grocery store. The stores near us have a shelf where bananas/mangos/oranges, etc that are starting to go brown, or are getting very ripe are marked way down. We stock up on this fruit when it’s on sale and chop it up & freeze it on cookie sheets when we get home. Once the fruit has been flash frozen, we transfer it to containers we keep in our freezer for frozen smoothie fruit that can be quickly added to our blender in the mornings. Using this method, we’ve been able to regularly buy organic bananas for 30-39 cents per pound!
Great idea, Julianne! Thanks for sharing!
This may seem like a silly question. You said to write the liquid amounts on the front. I’m assuming this means you don’t put the liquid in the jars when you freeze them? I realize it would freeze, but if you’re going to thaw them a bit before blending, do you think it would be a big problem? I’m trying to save as much time as possible in the morning. Thanks
Hi Shauna,
I would still keep the liquid separate. Fruit will thaw a bit quicker than liquid will. Plus, you don’t need to the fruit completely thawed before blending. Hope this helps!
You could also measure out the liquid you need in advance and store that in the fridge. Then in the morning, you just grab your bag or jar from the freezer, your liquid from the fridge and throw it all in the blender.
Hi guys just started the 30 days smoothie challenges i would like to know what is the best time in the day to drink our smoothie ?? thanks good job
Anytime, really. Lots of people drink them for breakfast so they can start their day on the right foot, but others drink theirs for lunch, dinner, or even as a snack!
Thanks for the great tips. Do the fruits and greens lose any of their nutritional value after being cut and then does the the freezing process degrade them at all? I live in a cold climate most of the year so would prefer to defrost them in the fridge overnight before blending but am concerned i’d be losing some of the nutrition.
Hi Andrea,
You’ll be losing a bit of nutrition, but not much! We think it’s worth it to freeze produce to help it last longer and make it more affordable!
Hey guys, I have a quick question about the nuts/seeds within fruits.
For example, with apples, should you de seed it prior to putting it into the blender?
What fruits should you take the nuts out of?
Thanks in advance, just want to know which are not good to consume health wise
Hi!
There really is no generally rule one which you need to take seeds/nuts out of, and which ones you don’t. We usually core apples so there are no seeds, but we hear of others that just toss the whole thing in (my grandpa eats apples whole). Most fruits should be deseeded before blending.
You should not eat the seeds of apples. The seeds may contain trace amounts of cyanide according to Michael T. Murray, who wrote “the complete book of juicing”. There are some others that you should not eat as well. You can google the fruit to find out which you can and can’t eat.
You would have to eat thousands of apple seeds to have any effect. Thats my understanding and i’ve been juicing and blending them for years.
I just wanted to say thanks for all the useful info in this post. A friend and I started our green smoothie challenge January 1 2014 and I never stopped. When the April challenge started we started a Facebook group and invited friends to join the challenge. We are approx. 8 -10 Strong at the moment and everyone is really getting into the spirit of the challenge. We share any tips we can with everyone including these wonderful ideas. Thank you again.
So glad you’re enjoying it, Amy!
What size canning jars were used for this?
1 quart, or 32 ounces!
Hi,
How does everyone feel about blending smoothies for the month and then freezing them? That way you just pull the finished product out and take it with?
We don’t personally do it, Dana, but we’ve heard of others doing it… Not sure how well it works.
It’s great! I use plastic bags, then Just grap and go. Or take out of the freezer, get in the shower and by the time I’m ready, so is the smoothie. Within about 20 minutes i put my straw in and drink it from the bag. That way You can get all of it and don’t dirty a glass. Double bonus. Another bonus, you can just clean the blender once a month and not daily.
Hi Dan – I live near Edinburgh, Scotland and most of our fruit is imported/expensive so the advice on freezing unused fruit rather than binning is really useful. My difficulty is the ‘cup’ measures your recipes suggest – in UK we tend to use grams/ounces.
The online interpretation of US cup = 8 UK fluid oz (liquid) and 8 UK oz (solids). Made my first green smoothie yesterday (delicious) but had difficulty getting the lid on my blender over tightly packed ingredients!! Ended up eating it with a spoon. What am I doing wrong?
Hi Joan!
The liquid measurements are right, but I’m not sure that 1 cup of solids equals 8 ounces of solids… It’s tough, because none of us are too familiar with UK measurements. A cup of fruit is about one large handful, if that helps at all…
Hi Joan, I also live in the UK, and until recently struggled with the US cup to UK grams/ounce conversion.
I picked up a cup measuring set in Dunelm Mills which have been very useful. If you don’t have a Dunelm near you, then maybe a cook shop will have them, or perhaps you can get a set on-line. Good luck.
I have been banking fruits in my freezer by processing say an entire bag of red grapes at once by de-stemming them and washing them, then measure out 1 cup and seal it into a snack sized zip-top bag. When my hubby and I cut up pineapple, we do two at a time and measure and bag the same way. Mangoes we buy 5-6 at a time and clean them all at once, bagging and freezing the same way.
Buy the fruit in season or on sale and get it into the freezer before any goes bad. Then, we keep an inventory on a white board of how many cups of each fruit we have. If we run out of snack sized bags, the sandwich size works fine too. I buy bananas 2 or 3 bunches at a time and when they get to the perfect ripeness, we peel them all and lay them out on a cookie sheet covered in plastic wrap then set the whole thing in the freezer. You can then stand the frozen bananas in a gallon sized zip-top bag and get a dozen or more in a single bag, then you can just pull out the number needed and break them into 3-4 pieces before adding to the blender.
For things that need roasted before adding to smoothies, we roast a bunch at a time then let them cool and measure into the amount need for the recipe (1/4 cup of beets or 1 cup of sweet potatoes) then freeze.
The small rectangular reusable plastic containers like Gladware (but I always buy store brand) work great too and are great for things like avocado, grapefruit sections, peeled kiwi, etc. They are see-thru and stack-able. The size I like best is the one that holds just over a cup.
If something calls for a teaspoon of lime juice, I squeeze all the juice I can out of the lime and use what I need that night, then measure the rest into a small “baby” muffin latex pan and freeze, then pop out the frozen 1 teaspoon disks and bag them in a snack size zip-top bag labeled and ready to go. No waste, and easier next time.
I don’t process all the fruit the same day, just as I am using a particular one or as it becomes ripe. I have been known to cut a pear from top to bottom in quarters and throw the whole pear with core and stem removed into a sandwich sized bag. The one thing I have not found in pre-frozen bags that I wish I could is pomegranate seeds. Those are so messy!
We love our smoothies to be easy and quick as an after work snack to hold us so we have time to cook a healthier dinner without snacking on empty calories because we are starving after work.
If the fruit is pre-measured and in the freezer, there is no excuse for skipping your smoothie (and why would you want to?)!
I never considered getting the smoothies ready like you show here ahead of time, I just measure and rinse the greens, let them drain, use the markings on the side of the blender to measure the liquid, then add the greens and the rest is a piece of cake! 5 Minutes or less and it’s “Smoothie Time!”. Which in our house, is like yelling dessert or ice cream.
Thanks so much for the Simple Green Smoothie website, you have changed mine and my husbands life for the better! We eat so much more produce now and less gets wasted too.
Blessings to the whole Simple Green Smoothie crew!
Hi!
Thanks for sharing all your tips! It’s neat to see how other people prep for green smoothies, and all the ways that work to make green smoothies easy and nutritious. We’re glad you are a part of our community, and hope you keep giving valuable input like this!
Karen it’s not just pomegranate seeds buts but I found target has an antioxidant mix that is (if I remember correctly) cherries, blueberries, strawberries, raspberry and pomegranate seeds. It’s the actual target brand. Not organic but could work in a pinch.
Sorry. Forgot to add they were frozen.
Can glass bottles be placed in the freezer? I thought they would crack.
Hi Dianne! Be sure to look if they are freezer safe. A lot of times, jars will say whether or not they are safe. Most Ball and Kerr jars are freezer safe.
Thank you for your quick reply, I live in Sydney and have never heard of that brand. I will check it out on the internet.
Can glass bottles be placed in the freezer. I thought they would crack.