Perfect Strawberry Smoothie

Here’s the most perfect strawberry smoothie you’ll find! It’s easy to blend up and has the best creamy texture and fruity flavor.

Have you met a perfect strawberry smoothie? Smoothies aren’t as easy to throw together it seems. Sure, you can throw random fruit and yogurt in the blender and whiz it up. But for the perfect creamy texture and the perfect just sweet enough fruit flavor? You’ve got to know something about smoothies. Alex and I have finally found our perfect strawberry smoothie recipe, which is below. Make it, memorize it, and make a perfect healthy smoothie on repeat!

What makes it a perfect strawberry smoothie?

Alex and I have been cooking for years and have a vegetarian cookbook under our belt, have mastered techniques like sourdough bread and pizza and lots of cocktails. So we decided: why not master smoothies? We started with this strawberry smoothie recipe. Here’s what it’s perfect, to us:

• Light and creamy texture. It’s easy for smoothies to turn out too icy or thick. This one is light and creamy, with just the right icy and airy texture.
• Subtly sweet, fruity flavor. Flavor is the variable: often smoothies are too bitter or overly sweet. It’s also easy to cover up the “signature” flavor. This strawberry smoothie is lightly sweet, with just the right berry essence.

Ingredients for this strawberry smoothie

Here’s what you’ll need to make this strawberry smoothie! Alex and I were careful to choose healthy ingredients for this smoothie: no overly sugary juices or syrups. Here’s what we selected:

• Frozen strawberries: It’s easy to find and store frozen berries, and they add a great icy texture to this smoothie. If you want to use fresh berries, use a frozen banana.
• Fresh banana: Our pet peeve is smoothie recipes that call for frozen bananas, because we never keep them on hand! Usually we want a smoothie recipe now. So we customized this one to use a fresh banana.
• Greek yogurt: Greek yogurt gives this recipe a protein boost and helpful probiotics. (If you love yogurt you could add a touch more.) It also makes for a perfect creamy texture.
• Ice: Here’s the most important part — ice is essential to a perfect strawberry smoothie! It makes just the right frothy texture. We’ve tried it without and it really makes a difference. Do not omit it!
• Milk: You need just the right amount of liquid in a smoothie to get it to blend. Not enough and the blender gets stuck (the worst!), and too much it tastes milky. You can also use non-dairy (see below).
• Maple syrup: Adding a hint of maple brings out the sweetness in the berries. If you eat a low sugar diet you could omit, but it doesn’t quite taste sweet enough with no sweetener.

How to make it plant based / vegan!

You can make this strawberry smoothie plant-based or vegan by doing the following:

• Make our strawberry banana smoothie. Try our Strawberry Banana Smoothie: it’s vegan and uses only 2 ingredients!
• Substitute non-dairy milk AND vegan yogurt or ½ banana for the yogurt. We like using oat milk or almond milk. Oat milk is usually a little sweeter and creamier so we tend to like that a little more. You could also try coconut milk, which adds a nice coconut essence, or soy milk. Then for the yogurt, use vegan yogurt or another ½ banana.

Optional add-ins & variations

Of course, you can mix in whatever you’d like to customize your healthy strawberry smoothie! But at the same time: if you want it to be perfect, you’ve got to use flavors that work. Here are some ideas:

• Almond butter. Almond goes well with strawberry. Use about 1 tablespoon, 2 for a stronger almond flavor (it will also dull the color a bit).
• Vanilla. Use ¼ to ½ teaspoon vanilla to heighten the flavors.
• Mint or basil. Add a few fresh mint or basil leaves for an herbaceous spin.
• Pineapple. Substitute 1 cup of the frozen berries for 1 cup frozen pineapple. Go to Strawberry Pineapple Smoothie.
• Mango. Substitute 1 cup of the frozen berries for 1 cup frozen mango. Go to Strawberry Mango Smoothie.
• Banana. Add another ripe banana and remove the Greek yogurt. Go to Strawberry Banana Smoothie.
• Blueberries. Substitute 1 cup of the frozen strawberries for blueberry. Or go to Strawberry Blueberry Smoothie.
• Chocolate. Add cocoa powder; go to Chocolate Strawberry Smoothie.

Things not to add? Handfuls of spinach leaves! They turn this smoothie into an unappealing shade of brown. If you want a green smoothie, go to our Perfect Green Smoothie.

Smoothie storage

Smoothies are best eaten immediately. But this strawberry smoothie actually lasts 1 to 2 days refrigerated, stored in a sealed container or a mason jar with the lid on. It may separate, which is perfectly natural. Just shake it up and you’re good to go!

This strawberry smoothie recipe is…

Vegetarian and gluten-free. For vegan, plant-based and dairy-free, see the recipe for variations.

Print

More smoothie recipes

We’ve got lots more where this came from! Here more smoothie recipes to try:

• Berries: Strawberry Banana, Mixed Berry, Blueberry, or Blueberry Banana Smoothie Full of sweet fruity flavor!
• Greens: Kale, Avocado, Green or Spinach Smoothie The flavor is so irresistible, you’ll forget you’re eating all those healthy ingredients.
• Sweet: Vanilla Protein or Peanut Butter Smoothie They taste a little like milkshakes…but they’re healthy smoothies!
• Fruits: Banana, Pineapple, Mango, Fruit, or Watermelon Smoothie Juicy and lightly sweet: perfectly refreshing.

Another great healthy drink? Try our homemade kombucha: it’s fun to brew your own at home!

Last updated: November 2020