Collard Green Smoothie
This Collard Green Smoothie recipe is dairy-free and vegan, and full of nourishing ingredients. Cocoa powder adds a chocolate taste, and covers any flavor from the greens. This is a great recipe when you want the nutrition of green leafy vegetables but don’t want to eat them plain.
Collard greens are such an under-appreciated vegetable. They are part of the cruciferous vegetable family, meaning that they are incredibly nutritious and health-promoting.
I’ve been putting them into my breakfast smoothies for well over a decade!
They are rich in natural calcium among other vitamins and minerals. I do generally like to steam them before blending them to help reduce the natural oxalate content of the greens (just be sure to squeeze out the water from steaming).
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Collard Greens Smoothie Recipe
This Collard Greens Smoothie is dairy-free and vegan, and full of nourishing ingredients. Cocoa powder adds a chocolate taste, and covers any flavor from the greens.
- Total Time: 16 minutes
- Yield: 2 1x
Ingredients
- 1 large bunch of collard greens
- 2 cups carrot juice
- 1/4 cup hemp seeds
- 1 cup frozen sweet cherries or any frozen berry
- 1/2 cup frozen mango chunks
- 1/4 cup frozen pineapple chunks
- 1 tablespoon cocoa or cacao powder
Instructions
- Prep the collard greens by washing each leaf and removing the stems from the leaves. Discard the stems and place the leaves in a steamer basket. Steam the leaves for 3 minutes. You can also steam the greens by placing them in a microwave-safe bowl, adding a tablespoon of water, covering with plastic wrap, and microwaving for 45 seconds.
- In the base of a high-speed blender, pour in the carrot juice and hemp seeds.
- Add the cherries, mango chunks, pineapple, steamed collard greens, and cocoa or cacao powder.
- Put the lid on tightly and process for 60-75 seconds. The smoothie should be well combined and creamy. Stop and scrape down the sides, if necessary, to make sure the smoothie gets completely blended with no chunks.
- Pour into two glasses and serve immediately.
Notes
- It is not necessary to steam the collard greens, but doing so will help reduce the oxalate content and make them more easily digestible. Steaming also helps reduce any bitterness of the flavor.
- You can add your choice of unsweetened protein powder to the smoothie to help add more protein, if you wish.
- You can store any leftovers in a covered container for up to 48 hours in the refrigerator.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 1 minute
- Category: Smoothie
- Method: Blender
- Cuisine: Homemade
- Diet: Vegan
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 1/2 cups
- Calories: 301
- Sugar: 27.2 g
- Sodium: 161 mg
- Fat: 10.9 g
- Saturated Fat: 1.3 g
- Carbohydrates: 47.4 g
- Fiber: 7 g
- Protein: 10.9 g
- Cholesterol: 0 mg
More Smoothie Recipes You Might Like
Don’t miss my other healthy green smoothie recipes, including:
- Anti-Cancer Breakfast Smoothie
- Broccoli Sprout Smoothie
- Swiss Chard Smoothie
- Moringa Smoothie
- Weight Loss Green Smoothie
About the Author: Carrie Forrest has a master’s degree in public health with a specialty in nutrition and is a certified holistic nutritionist. She is a top wellness and food blogger with over 5 million annual visitors to her site. Carrie has an incredible story of recovery from chronic illness and is passionate about helping other women transform their health. Send her a message through her contact form.
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One of my fav smoothie recipes!
Carrie, Collards do seem to be an under-used green smoothie addition. I’ve only tried it a couple of times. Kale seems to get all of the love (and rightly so because it is soooo nutrient dense). Oxalates or not it’s a good idea to eat/drink a variety of greens. That way we get the full nutritional spectrum that these superfiods have to offer.
Our website has a section full of free green smoothie recipes. Would you mind if we include your Collard recipe and link back to your blog?
Thanks
LittleGreenSmoothie.com
Thanks for the note, I agree 100% that we need to rotate greens to get the most optimal benefit. And, yes, please include my recipe on your site, that would be wonderful, thanks!
Oh I LOVE collard greens in my smoothies. And they are so easy to grow in the garden too! 🙂
Cool! I wish I had a garden but for now I rely on my farmers’ markets.
Thanks Carrie! I’ll make sure to round out my green selection with stuff besides spinach. I am eating mixed greens for my salads and kale, but I like the idea of 1/3’s, so I’ll use that as a general rule. And I’ll give the kale a try in my smoothies, too! I’ve used chard, but not kale yet.
I’ve been making green smoothies pretty consistently over the past two weeks as I embarked on Dr. Fuhrman’s Eat to Live program. Should I be worrying about the oxalates? I use spinach every time. I could mix it up a bit, but I really am liking the neutral taste of the spinach.
In terms of lifestyle, although I’m really overweight (234 lbs on a 5’2″ frame), I’ve been trying for the past year and a half to participate in power yoga but I fall on and off the wagon. Especially when I’m not eating right, which has been most of the time. However, I timed my start on Dr. Fuhrman’s plan with the start of what’s called the ’40 Days’ program at my local yoga studio. I commit to doing yoga 6 days per week and this is paired up with journaling, nutrition, and meditation. This is my third go-around on the 40 Days program. Each time I do it it’s like taking 3 steps forward in my journey, and then when I’m done I fall two steps back. Now that I’ve had two weeks of Eat to Live under my belt, I’ve kicked the cravings I was having and feel like I can keep up more with the yoga…for the 40 days and beyond.
Hi Gina, thanks for the comment. From what I have gathered on Dr. F’s member site, you don’t need to really worry about the oxalates in spinach unless they are the primary source of greens for you. I think he recommends that spinach be no more than 1/3 of your greens intake. Are you eating other greens like romaine in salads or kale? I agree with you that spinach has a very neutral flavor, but I have found that kale is also very neutral and highly, highly nutritious. So, you might want to try kale instead of spinach a few days a week. As mentioned in my post, collards are also a good choice.
Your yoga plans sounds intense but incredible, I would love to do something like that. It sounds like the most important thing for you is making sure you don’t “backslide” after the 40 days are over. Keep up the good work though, it sounds like you are making really great progress.
I love green smoothies – had one this morning as a matter of fact. We made a pretty standard recipe this morning, but I love how you can just throw anything into the blender and really have fun with smoothies.
I’m working on making better nutrition choices this year – eating more like an athlete than a weekend warrior – so that I can be even stronger. Small changes, but things like not always rewarding myself with food & drinks. 🙂
Hi Heather! I love your attitude about eating more like an athlete than a weekend warrior. Since I have started working out more intensely, I have been feeling a lot more athletic and I love that feeling of strength! P.S. I love smoothies too, can you tell? 🙂
Since high school I’ve gone from fast food addict to juice and green smoothie lover. Major change! Now I’m dealing with cutting out refined sugar and investigating a wheat allergy.
I’m playing around with green smoothies too! Love the addition of flaxmeal.
The smoothie looks yummy! I’ve backed off green smoothies due to the oxalates (since osteoporosis runs in my family—I figure I don’t need extra disadvantages), but it’s always good to know about the better options over spinach! I love collards, but have not blended them (yet!).
I think different approaches work for different people in terms of food and lifestyle. I keep things really simple in the kitchen and tend to make the same thing for 4 days and then move on (variety over time is ok, right?! lol). I think health is right at the top of my list of priorities, and I’m working on more aspects of it now than I used to. The only change I’m working on is to not weigh myself—till 2013. It’s not that I weighed myself all the time, but I just want to focus on the qualitative aspects of food choices!
Hi Lisa, as far as I can tell, not all greens have oxalates, right? Wow, that is a really interesting experiment not to weigh yourself for a year, but it totally makes sense. I weigh myself regularly, but I rarely make food choices based on my weight, I try really, really hard to make food choices based on nutrition and my hunger level.