When the smoothie shop craze took off in my college years, I was surprised by how popular such an easily made beverage became, particularly when shops included ingredients that made smoothies more like milkshakes. One reason for the popularity seemed to be the long menu of flavors and add-ins. As I explain this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon, you can create similar smoothies far more affordably and with local ingredients if you have a well-stocked freezer.

If store-bought smoothies always seem more delicious than your homemade ones, you might need to check the label for sugar and sodium content and alter your expectations. You also might need a higher-powered blender to liquify vegetables and break down chunks. As further adjustments, consider the balance of fruit and vegetables, add-ins, and thickener and using my favorite base, Homemade Small-Batch Yogurt.

Learn more about balancing smoothie ingredients and get the complete recipe for Fresh Yogurt Smoothie in my column.

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Twice as Tasty

My favorite tool for making smoothies to drink at home has long been a Breville Control Grip immersion blender. I’ve tested several other options, including Black+Decker’s attachment-loaded Kitchen Wand for The Spruce Eats and Breville’s larger All-in-One immersion blender package and Fresh & Furious upright blender, and I keep returning to the smaller immersion blender setup. It’s just as or more powerful and fits best in my tiny kitchen. For a few years now, I’ve also owned a BlendJet 2 portable blender, which has become my go-to for smoothies I’m taking out the door. The integrated blender base makes it a little tall and awkward to drink from in the car, but it gets travel points for its no-leak seal and the ability to reblend ingredients that might have separated on the drive.

When I’m pureeing large batches of fresh fruit and vegetables to freeze in cubes for smoothies, I typically use Cuisinart’s 14-cup food processor, which I’ve written about for Allrecipes. Its larger, sharp blade and high speed are better at initially breaking down tough kale leaves and spinach stems and make raspberry pulp seem less seedy to me. I then freeze the puree in silicone cube trays. When I blend a cube again into a smoothie, the greens lose even more coarseness.

I see tools like high-quality immersion blenders and food processors as investments, so I want to apply them to more than morning beverages. I use my immersion blender whenever I’m pureeing a stockpot of hot soup, partially frozen homemade sorbet, or roasted winter squash for gnocchi and other homemade pasta. My food processor pulverizes nuts for cookies and raw, soaked chickpeas for falafel. On a big salsa or pasta sauce canning day, I use both tools.

Here are just a few other recipes on the blog that have me pulling out one of these small appliances. You can find more in the recipe index.

• Green Goddess Salad Dressing
• Grilled Tomato Pizza Sauce
• Fresh Broccoli and Cheddar Soup
• Black Bean Veggie Burgers
• Homemade Enchilada Sauce
• Garlic Scape Aioli

The recipe index also has blog posts about some of my other favorite kitchen tools. If you want to learn how to make better smoothies with me, schedule an in-person workshop.

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.