Here's how I make mine. It takes less than 5 min. and they're amazing!
The set-up.
Blender, banana, frozen fruit, ice, orange juice,
and my oversized mug (~750 mL)
Step 1: Banana
It adds a nice flavour and it's healthy!
Step 2: Frozen fruit
Frozen fruit gives the smoothie a nice icy texture. A variety of frozen fruit are usually available in grocery stores. Use whatever you want. Experiment. Use fresh fruit if you don't have frozen fruit.
Step 3: Ice
Makes it a bit more icy. This step is optional. I've been doing this recently to reduce the amount of frozen fruit needed as I'm running low.
Step 4: Juice
I use orange juice. You can substitute for apple, pineapple, mango, cranberry, or whatever your heart desires. I use enough to mostly cover the ingredients. The juice is needed to make it drink-like and also so that it can blend properly.
Step 5: Pulse
There are a lot of solids in the mixture. The pulse (P on the dial) spins the blades quickly for a short period of time to pulverize the solids and then allow them to settle back down onto the blade so that the blades don't run dry. I pulse for maybe a half dozen times until most of the big chunks have been broken down.
Step 6: Blend
I blend for about 10-15 seconds on the highest setting. The mixture should be sloshing around quite freely. If it gets stuck and the blades seem to be spinning without blending anything and the contents aren't moving around well, it's b/c there's an air bubble and you need more liquid.
The (blurry) result
I make the perfect amount every time :)
Yummy!
It disappears very fast.
When I ran out frozen fruit, I used fresh fruit. When I ran out of fresh fruit, I started making Kool-Aid slushees (Ice Blue Kool-Aid + ice). Fortunately when the Kool-Aid ran out, I had gotten more frozen fruit and orange juice :)
On Elsa's suggestion, I tried making a red bean drink with the blender. Ordinarily, you have to boil the red beans for like 2-3 hours (maybe more) until they become soft, so it's not something you can just do on a whim (like if you want red bean at midnight).
The idea here is to grind up the red beans so they cook faster. I blended the beans with a bit of water and it was kinda weird. Beans were just flying everywhere inside the jar. Then I boiled it in a pot for maybe 10-15 min. and added sugar. Added ice to cool it down (not supposed to put boiling water in the blender, at least my instruction manual said so) and re-blended to make an icy (I prefer red bean cold).
About to blend
It was kinda frothy after blending and not so icy as most of the ice melted
It was decent, not amazing. I prefer red beans in their whole form as opposed to their blended form. Plus, I think I over cooked the red beans a bit, so it was kinda mushy. My next experiment is to make a pot of red bean and blending just the liquid + ice and then adding the beans to the mix. I'll let you know how it turns out.
