3 Reasons To Freeze Your Fruit/Greens For Green Smoothies
1. Green smoothies taste SO much better with that smoothie like texture you get from frozen fruit.
2. You can save a lot of money buying fruit and greens when in season and freezing them.
3. You will never have a day that you don’t have smoothie ingredients on hand. In fact if I am out of produce I will usually make a green smoothie for a fresh snack until I can get to the grocery store. Or you can eat the frozen fruit plain. Frozen bananas and peanut butter is my favorite treat.
How To Freeze Fruit
1. Prepare your fruit; wash your fruit, and then peel your bananas, slice your strawberries in half, quarter your pineapple, peel your oranges and break them up into four segments, slice your melons in pieces without the skin.
2. Spread the fruit out on a cookie tray. This is called flash freezing, it prevents all of your fruit from becoming one big frozen clump in your freezer.
3. Once your fruit is frozen hard transfer it to a zip loc bag. Label the bag with the date.
How To Freeze Greens
1. I like to buy Costco’s big bag of spinach and put the whole thing in the freezer. Spinach breaks apart nicely when frozen. Costco’s spinach is a fraction of the price than the regular grocery store and freezing it ensures it will never go bad. This one tip will save you a TON of money.
2. I like to buy a bags of swiss chard, collard greens, and kale that is washed and pre-chopped at Sunflower market. I put the whole thing bag in the freezer as well. It saves you time buying it pre-washed and chopped and the greens are the same price if not cheaper. If you can’t find the pre chopped greens wash your greens, chop them up stem and all, and then put them in a zip loc bag. No need to flash freeze greens.
More Tips
Buy up cheap oranges while they are in season. Juice the oranges and freeze the orange juice in ice cube trays. Pop out the juice cubes and add them to your smoothies year round. You can do this with lemon and limes as well.
Cut up ginger (peel and all) in pieces and freeze it to add to smoothies later.
I like to cut my limes in small wedges with the peel on, and flash freeze them to add to smoothies. The peel of the lime is where most of the nutrients are.
How Long Does Fruit Stay Good For in The Freezer
Fruit will stay good in the freezer for 6-12 months.
I love your site!
Just one question for you…how much of the nutrients are lost through the freezing of greens?
Jessica-Thanks! This is a good article explaining freezing and loss of nutrients http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=george&dbid=215. Freezing greens does not have a significant loss in nutrients. In fact it is a lot healthier to buy frozen produce like corn and green beans that has been picked in season fresh, than some produce that has been picked way before it is mature shipped across the country and sat in a grocery store for a weeks. It is also a lot better than canned produce. The best is to buy the produce when in season from as local as possible but a good option in the dead of winter is to buy frozen produce. HOpe that helps answer your question.
Wow! I learned so much from this article. Thanks for the great tips! I bought a Costco bag of spinach just once and never again because it got all gross and soggy from not eating it fast enough. Love all your other ideas too. Thanks again!
I am glad that it helped. I did the same thing with the Costco bag of spinach until I learned you could freeze the bag. Now you will never have to throw away greens again.
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Do you know if after you’ve frozen the bags of kale or spinach if you can use them for juicing or just for smoothies?
Jan, thanks for stopping by. I have never tried to juicing grees them after. I think the spinach would be too delicate but I could be totally wrong. Let me know if you try it.
The spinach would totally work if you’re a high-powered blender (like a Vitamix), but if you’re using an actual juicer – the kind where you have to push food in one end – it’s going to be a problem. The other issue with juicers is the loss of fiber and just total waste of a bulk of the produce, or the need to come up with creative ways to use all of your “pulp” – how many muffins can a person really eat? I can’t recommend the Vitamix more highly (I promise I’m not working for them/paid by them, etc.); it pulverizes everything into total smoothness. My boys go mental if they see, feel or taste seeds in there smoothies or yogurt pops (like raspberry seeds) and it even obliterates those! It’s expensive, but if you eat a lot of smoothies, juices, smooth soups and the like, it pays for itself within months. I got mine at Costco, but I’ve occasionally seen Amazon run a deal that beats that price.
can i freeze fresh bags of collards, turnips and mustard greens that are about to expire and ruin? i bought several bags that were reduced to $0.99 cents per big bag.
Hi Brittany, yes you can! It won’t have the same texture, but for using it in green smoothies, or cooking it, it works perfectly.
Instead of freezing the whole bag of greens, you can blend the greens with water and freeze the liquid in ice cube trays. Once frozen, I put them in freezer bags. When I make my smoothie, I just grab 3 or 4 and toss them in. I did the same to my pineapple, carrots and oranges. Having the fruit as ice cubes makes storage a lot easier.
Hi Alicia! That is brilliant. Thanks for writing your great idea! On a funny side note, one day I made a smoothie at my moms with what I thought was frozen pineapple cubes. I put quite a few in and blended it. The first taste of my smoothie I almost lost it. The cubes weren’t pineapple but raw eggs! Seriously SO gross!! I will have to make REAL pineapple cubes this time, and the greens is something I have never thought of before. Thanks again Alicia!
THanks for the great tips and info. I’ve been trying to start preparing green smoothies for a while and I have not been too consistent. I have a quick question. You say that you freeze the whole bag of spinach from costco. If I remember correctly the big bag is not prewashed. Do you wash before you place it in the freezer?
Hi Jen!
It is actually triple washed-so I don’t wash it I just put it straight in the freezer:) Hope that helps!
I’ve been throwing my entire lemon in smoothies as well. it’s okay to do that, right? i use organic lemons only. you only mentioned lime peels so i wanted to verify. thanks!
Hi Jan! Yes both are great!
Love this article. I have also been buying the Costco spinach and have a really hard time finishing it all. I see that fruit will last 6-12 months, but how long will the greens last? Thank you!
Desi, my first time on your site. I love it and love this tip about flash freezing fruits. Great info. Thanks
Hi Linda! So glad you came!
My question here is, after you freeze them, can you just pop them all in the blender? i noticed my blender had a really hard time blending and would kinda stall out. I just recently bought a Ninja, and it was able to blend them, but it was just a bunch of frozen bits, i had to add a lot more liquid them usual and it didn’t have the same taste. Should I be thawing them out first or does everyone just throw all the frozen bits in there?
Hi Crystal. It really helps to have a high powered blender. I know they are expensive and my husband and I saved up for awhile to buy our Blendtec, but it makes a difference as far as frozen bits go. It pulverizes everything! But I would add them a little at a time maybe and blend and then add some more and blend to cut down on the work load for the blender. Or you could do un frozen fruit it just changes the texture of the smoothie. Hope that helps! Join the 30 day challenge and you maybe could win one!
Thank you so much for all the helpful info. I just got through pre packing my smoothie ingredients. I’m packing a banana, strawberries, spinach and kale from Costco. When I finished I thought, oh boy can Kale be frozen!? Hahaha I guess I should’ve thought of that first. So I looked you up and there it is! You saved my concern! Thank you very much!
Hi Leonor! Oh great! So glad to hear. Isn’t Costco the best thing ever?
So glad I found your website! (I’m a wallflower in B101)
I usually can’t get through the Costco spinach and bananas fast enough with our daily Vitamix. Looking forward to flash freezing!
Hi Maggie! So glad you stopped by. Yes it is the best. Before I knew you could freeze spinach I would end up throwing away some of the bag. Now I just pop it in the freezer before it goes bad.
This is great information! I truly had no idea you could just throw greens in the freezer. Costco now carries huge bags of pre-washed and chopped kale, so I popped my in the freezer in anticipation of the greens challenge!
Hi Robin! Isn’t nice that you can freeze them, before I knew that I wasted so many greens. I LOVE that bag of kale, we do the same here. Yeah! Can’t wait to have you in the challenge.
I am so thrilled I found your site! I have a Tower Garden that grows soo much organic greens so fast, I can’t keep up!, now that I have your tips on freezing, I don’t need to worry about waste!!”I have read that you have to blanch first. Is this true?
Thank you
Hi Cheryl! I am so glad you found me too! I don’t blanch them first. I just freeze them right away! Hope that helps. Your garden sounds so fun.
Desi
Hi Cheryl! I am so glad you found me too! I don’t blanch them first. I just freeze them right away! Hope that helps. Your garden sounds so fun.
Thanks voor all the great tips
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