Roosevelt Culinary Arts

Smoothies

It’s a new semester at Roosevelt High School, which means we are starting fresh. And what is fresher than fruit (and vegetable) smoothies?!

We used an immersion blender instead of the classic blender. This allowed each student to fill their own cup with the ingredients of their choice. It’s also a good tool to know how to use in general, as it is a relatively cheap appliance and has a small footprint in the kitchen. And it works excellent with smoothies!

We started by watching this video from Tasty to get our creative fruit juices flowing:

With some ideas in mind, we created this template/formula for the smoothies. Fill each cup:

1/2 full with solid ingredients (frozen fruit, frozen spinach, bananas, oranges, apples, avocado)
1/3 to the top with liquid ingredients (water, plant-based milk, coconut milk, regular milk, or yogurt)
adding in flavor enhancers (a little bit of honey, maple syrup, sugar, vanilla, lime juice, mint leaves, chocolate or vanilla protein powder)

We realized that it’s important to start with the solid ingredients and finish with the liquids when using an immersion blender, and also to slowly blend through to the bottom, so as not to lock up the motor.

We also talked about the importance of using our senses; especially tasting to get the right balance of ingredients. After blending up the smoothies, students tasted and adjusted for sweetness, balance of fruit, and texture (not too thick or thin).

It was really cool to see how different each smoothie was, based on texture, color, and flavor. But they were all delicious! We even had some extra, which we poured into small dixie cups (along with a popsicle stick) to make smoothsicles for later 🙂

What a fun week of exploring the world of smoothies! Here are some highlights from the recipes created, tested, and explained by the culinary artists: