Elyse Kopecky’s Favorite Veggies for Smoothies

When meal prepping smoothies, you want to make sure you’re including vegetables—they provide major nutrition without adding sugar. In the video below, Elyse Kopecky shares her five favorites for the best veggies for smoothies and tips for how to prep them so they’re ready to go.

Part of the Mastering Meal Prep with Elyse Kopecky video series. Learn more smoothie how-tos here:

Fats & Flavors

Read transcript, below:

ELYSE KOPECKY: In this episode, we are going to talk about the vegetables that you can sneak into smoothies. You are going to be surprised to learn how many different veggies are really delicious in smoothies. I’m going to teach you how to prep those veggies in advance so that your smoothie only takes you five minutes to pull together in the morning.

So you guys know one of my favorite vegetables to include in smoothies is beets. I steam beets every week and keep them stashed in our fridge. They’re great for adding on top of salads and they’re great for smoothies, which is what we mostly use them for. And before you steam them, you just want to trim it up and wash them. So you take off the ends and then to preserve the nutrients you want to leave the skin on, and you’re not going to take the skin off until they’re steamed. So we’re just quartering these beets and then they’re going to be ready to steam. And these beautiful beets are now ready for steaming.

Carrots are another one of my go-to for smoothies, because it doesn’t require any advance prep. You simply peel them, wash them, and cut them in half and toss them directly into the smoothie. So another one of my go-tos, especially in the summer, when you have zucchini growing like wild in your backyard, or getting a lot of zucchini from the farmer’s market, you can steam it and freeze it for future smoothies. So this is really simple. I just trim off the ends, and then I cut it into little thick rounds about this size. And those are just going to toss into the steamer basket and steam cook. Zucchini cooks really fast. It’ll be soft in like five minutes, and then you can freeze it into individual-size bags.

Cauliflower is another one of my go-tos for steaming and putting into smoothies. You’d be surprised how much creaminess cauliflower can add to your smoothies and with all the other ingredients are going to add, you’re not going to taste it at all. So all you’re going to do is cut off the little florets. So you’re going to cut it down to almost bite size little pieces, and that’ll fit nicely in your steamer basket. You’re going to steam cook these for 10 to 15 minutes until it’s soft. And then you want to actually freeze your cauliflower. You want to let the cauliflower cool, and then you’re going to store it in your freezer in small bags, just the right size for each of your smoothies.

Another vegetable that I love to include in my smoothies is of course, trusty kale. To prep kale you want to wash it really well. And then we’re going to just take out the stem. The stem is really fibrous and hard to digest. So all you’re going to do is pull the leaves off of the stem.

I’m going to share with you another one of my favorite ingredients to add into smoothies, and that is ginger. To prep it, you just want to pull off a piece from the big piece of root. You always want to wash your ginger really well. And you can use a peeler, or I like to use the edge of a spoon works really well to just take off this part of the ginger. This is about a one inch, two inch piece of ginger, and that’s the perfect amount to toss into your smoothies. So I cut up a bunch of little pieces that are peeled like this. I keep it in a small little glass jar in the fridge, and you can just grab them to toss into your smoothie.