This Kale Papaya Smoothie is such a great mid morning snack or quick breakfast on the run. It’s so easy to make and customize!! Plus the tropical flavors make you feel like you’re just a short walk from the beach:).
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Baby Kale
I love using baby kale for this smoothie. Wash, remove the stems and blend with juice or milk of choice until you get a homogenous mix. Baby kale makes the blending process so much easier.
Tip: If you bought a big bag of kale and want to make this smoothie everyday, wash it all, drain in a colander and then store in ziplock bags in 2 oz servings.
Milk, Juice or Yogurt?
You can customize this smoothie to your taste. The 3 staples for this smoothie are baby kale, papaya and banana. Then you can use a milk of your choice, Greek yogurt or simple juice (like pineapple juice or orange juice) or sometimes even a combination.
When I make a big batch for the whole family, I use the bigger blender. Then I serve my kids first. Afterwards, I add protein to the remaining smoothie in the blender and blend some more. The protein version is for my husband and myself. If I’m making just one serving, I tend to use the Nutribullet.
Papaya
Papaya is a tropical fruit, it’s widely found in the Caribbean, Central America, and southern states like Florida and California. Here in Miami we are lucky to find papaya in our markets almost year around. However, some months have better looking/tasting fruit than others.
Papaya varies in size, usually weighs from 3 to 8 lbs. This fruit tastes like melon, it has an orange flesh and black seeds.
Usually I use half of the papaya on the smoothie and the other half I chop it in cube shapes and serve during snack time for the kids. Because of this, I rarely ever make a single serve of this smoothie since I need to use up half of the fruit usually so I definitely prepare at least 2 to 3 servings at a time.
Kale Papaya Smoothie
Equipment
- Blender
Ingredients
- 3-4 oz baby kale
- 0.5 papaya
- 1 banana
- 4 ice cubes
- 2 cups pineapple juice or orange juice
Instructions
- Wash kale and let drain, remove stems. Peel papaya, remove the seeds and chop in cube shapes. Peel banana too.
- Start by blending baby kale with pineapple juice until very smooth (use pulse setting if your blender has that). Then add papaya and banana, blend again until smooth. Finally add ice cubes and use the ice crushing setting, then blend one more time.
- Serve right away!!
Notes
- I try to make this smoothie really fast, I try to not weigh ingredients or measure them by volume. Usually for 2 servings of smoothie I use 1 banana and half papaya, however keep in mind that both bananas and papaya can vary wildly in size. So feel free to add a little more or less based on the fruit size you are using.
- If you love creamy smoothies, feel free to add some Greek yogurt to the blend.
- Add protein as needed if you’re looking for a filling smoothie.
- If you’re looking for a lower carbs smoothie, then replace pineapple juice with almond milk, oat milk (unsweetened).
Nutrition Label
Nutrition
If you would like to save this recipe for later, please save the below image to your boards in Pinterest. Let me know how you make this smoothie in comments or tag me in social media, I love seeing different variations of this:).
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Other Smoothies
Feel free to check out these other smoothies from my blog:
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