The best kale recipes on the internet usually all have the same cast of characters, and the best thing they have in common is that they’re all healthy recipes. You’d have to try pretty hard to make a kale smoothie unhealthy. (Maybe if you deep-fried it, which, please don’t.) And even then, what more do you want? You’ve got everything you need in one refreshing, delicious, and ultimately efficient, useful drink.

This is the best, most basic, “good” kale smoothie that you can find just about anywhere that sells them. Most of the ingredients that make up what is now a “traditional” kale smoothie are almost inevitably superfoods. So, here is your basic, easy, “best” kale smoothie, which still takes advantage of all the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients in kale.

Basic Best Kale Smoothie Recipe

Here’s what you’ll find in most places:

• ½ cup of chopped up kale
• ½ of one medium-sized banana
• 1 tbsp of peanut or almond butter
• ½ cup of coconut water
• 1 tsp of cinnamon
• ½ tsp of nutmeg
• ½ tsp of ground ginger
• A pinch of salt
• 1 cup of ice

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve received from a juice-barista was, “Just imagine that you’re making a salad, a really amazing, delicious salad, that you would eat even if it weren’t blended. Add something sweet, put it in a blender, juicer, or food processor, and use it to start your day.”

The psychological health benefits of starting your day off with an easy kale smoothie are huge:

You’re getting rid of the most “chore-like” food-related part of your day (eating your vegetables!)

Then using that natural energy boost, flavor kick, and nutrients during your busy day, instead of for your evening.

Millions of people swear by it, and it’s difficult not to find a great recipe for making a fun kale smoothie. There are a lot of pretty good kale smoothie recipes out there, and most of them will be very similar, so you can’t really go wrong.

But a daily kale smoothie is something that you’re going to drink more than once, so depending on your mood, mixing it up based on the kind of day you’re going to have, or in whichever mood you wake up, or however you’re feeling after your workout, is usually the best idea.

What are the Health Benefits of Kale Smoothies?

Now here is that same, classic Basic Best Kale Smoothie Recipe, but broken down into its components. You see, a kale smoothie is like coffee: it’ll be the same to you pretty much anywhere you decide to get one if you don’t drink it every day, but there will be slight variations on it depending on where you go. And these variations become important if you’re a regular kale smoothie drinker.

So, if you think of the components in a way where they’re intent-based, as opposed to just purely ingredients with some magical formula of what is and isn’t “good,” you can start making your own kale smoothies at home in an easy, fast, efficient manner.

You can also start mixing it up on days where you have more time or you just need something new that day.

This will arm you to make the best kale pineapple smoothie, blueberry kale smoothie, greek yogurt kale smoothie, vegan kale smoothies, or really any great smoothie you can make using kale leaves. These are the basics, but also everything you’ll ever need to know.

A hamburger, for example, can be broken down into:

• Bun
• Protein
• Leafy green
• Aromatic veggie
• Texture veggie
• Condiments

So, a really delicious kale smoothie, in most of its forms, can be broken down into the following components.

Best Kale Smoothie Ingredients, By Component:

• Chopped kale
• A texture-thickening agent – Think bananas, powder, yogurt, a nut butter of choice (almond, peanut, sunflower, pistachio, etc.), cashews, and/or anything else with a creamy consistency. Some people even do different kinds of frozen yogurt or ice cream.
• A liquifying agent – Coconut milk/water, yogurt, almond milk, cow milk, juice, or any other complementary liquid can help you blend your smoothie.
• Sweet antioxidants – Blueberries, pineapple, apples, chia seeds, flax seeds, strawberries, hemp seeds, matcha, and cherries are great choices.
• An energy-boosting aromatic “kick” – Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, arugula, Swiss chard, a tiny pinch of sea salt, and a squeeze of lemon can give you, and your smoothie, a boost.
• An optional additional sweetener – Honey, agave, maple syrup, raw dates or figs, frozen yogurt, ice cream, vanilla extract, or another healthy sweetener can offset the kale taste if you’re not too wild about it.
• Ice

Now that you know how to make best easy kale smoothie you can have at home, even in a rush, you have your toolbox of component parts with which you can play around for the rest of your life, really. You can make a delicious kale smoothie that tastes like a milkshake, and even a green smoothie that’ll help you de-bloat. The possibilities are almost endless.

Please feel free to discover absolutely anything that fills your heart’s desires. This is mostly trial and error.

Kale Smoothie Recipes

For the time being, though, here are some great kale smoothie recipes for different moods and purposes. You can add different quantities of any of the components above, you can add multiple antioxidants, add multiple texture-liquifying agents, more kale, mix up sweeteners and powders… the world is your oyster kale smoothie.

Experiment until you find your very own kale smoothie recipe that you can share with your friends and family.

While an amazing kale smoothie can be a delicious treat, a lot of people start their day with one. And,  it’s something you’re doing every single day, then you do want to mix it up based on your mood sometimes!

To get you started, here are some top kale smoothie recipes that you can make easily at home, organized by mood and purpose. All are all healthy, great alternatives to anything you can buy at your local juice bar, just in case you don’t have the time to go out for a smoothie every single day.

Recipe #1 – Calm Kale Smoothie 

The health benefits of kale smoothies are what medical companies, health gurus, and lifestyle websites have been trying to get us to do forever, which is, basically, just: eat your vegetables. “Your body will thank you” sounds kind of lame, but ultimately, it’s very true. If you’re looking for a kale smoothie to help you relax, or even to help lull you into sleep, you want something with fewer B-vitamins, and you want something with lots of calming properties to it.

Stuff You’ll Need (Ingredients):

• ¼ cup of granola, or any uncooked oats of your choice
• ½ cup of chopped spinach
• ½ cup of chopped kale
• 1 cup of brewed sleepy-time tea, chamomile, or other non-caffeinated, floral tea of choice
• ¾ cup of grenadine, frozen berries, or cherry juice
• 1 fresh banana
• 1 ½ tbsp of almond, peanut, cashew, or sunflower seed butter
• ½ cup of ice
• Raw manuka honey, or raw natural honey of choice to taste

How To Do It (Instructions):

1. Grind the oats in your processor or blender, then once they’re a fine powder, add the produce.
2. Blend/process on high until it is thin enough to drink. You don’t need a straw for this one.

Recipe #2 – Hangover Cure Kale Smoothie (a.k.a. Your Morning Kale Smoothie)

If you’ve lived through college, your twenties, or any election cycle, you’ve probably realized that self-care comes first. And there are few times when people regularly use self-care more than they do when they’re hungover. Your morning smoothie, if composed correctly, can double as your hangover smoothie.

Why not treat your body the way you would when you’re in recovery-mode, but every single day? It’s a simple concept, but escapes a lot of us as we get wrapped up in our jobs, lives, or heads. This kale smoothie for hangovers is loaded with B-vitamins, antioxidants, leafy greens, and flavor, and it’s light enough so that you can keep it down even on the worst of mornings (no matter what is making it a particularly bad morning).

Stuff You’ll Need (Ingredients):

• 1 cup of chopped kale
• 1 beet, if you have it
• 1 fresh banana
• 1 apple
• 1 stalk of Swiss chard
• ½ cup of frozen or fresh berries of choice, blueberries are best for this
• 1 tbsp of chia seeds
• 1 tbsp of flax seeds
• ½ tsp of cinnamon
• ½ tsp of nutmeg
• 2 cups of coconut water
• 1 tbsp of sweetener, preferably agave or raw natural or manuka honey
• ½ cup of ice

How To Do It (Instructions):

For this one, you can throw everything in there at once and blend/process away. Make sure to cue something up on Netflix before you make it, so that you all you have to do is lie down, drink up (the smoothie), and feel better. Some people pour themselves water before they go out drinking, and some people buy and prepare smoothie ingredients before they go out drinking. You can be one of the latter.

Recipe #3 – Post-Workout Kale Smoothie 

Post-workout gets a little hairy, because everyone has different goals. So, we’re going to go very broad with this concept. The first piece here is that we want this smoothie to be low in fiber. Fiber makes it so that your body doesn’t absorb nutrients as easily as it would if you hadn’t just worked out.

Your body needs to start rebuilding again, no matter what kind of workout you just finished, so your post-workout kale smoothie should not have a ton of fiber.

To prevent a spike your insulin levels, what you’re trying to do here is level your body out.

When you’re depleting your energy at the gym, what you want to do is replenish your carbs, or even just something with a higher glycemic index, if you’re doing keto. Your body will absorb foods with a high glycemic index much quicker.

This is why different wheys are usually helpful, as well as grapefruit. With grapefruit and protein isolates, if you have those, you will have a fast-digesting fiber and a fast-digesting protein. That’s the goal of this smoothie.

You want to use your smoothie to help actually repair your body. Longer-burn proteins like Greek yogurt aren’t bad, but if you’re going to eat those, you also want a short-form protein. Your body will absorb it faster.

This smoothie should make sure that you will have energy that lasts you all day by replenishing your body post-workout.

Stuff You’ll Need (Ingredients):

• ½ cup of pineapple (frozen or fresh or canned)
• 2 cups of almond milk
• 2 cups of coconut water
• ½ cup of kale
• 1 stalk of Swiss chard
• ½ cup of spinach
• 1 tbsp of ground ginger
• 1 tbsp of chia seeds
• 1 small banana
• ¼ cup of fresh or natural grapefruit juice, unsweetened if possible

How To Do It (Instructions):

1. Start with the veggies, spices, and the liquids, then blend in the fruits.
2. Add the seeds last for texture.
3. Blend until drinkable through a straw easily, because you’ve worked hard enough for the day.

Kale: Mix It Up 

Based on what you like, what you need your really amazing kale smoothies for is to awaken your body to what it needs that it might not be getting yet. It’s up to you to change that, and it’s relatively easy, but it does take some dedication. And even if you’re not the best at following recipes, kale juices, smoothies, and milkshakes are objectively delicious.

Even if this is your first kale smoothie recipe attempt, or your one-thousandth, thinking of smoothies in terms of components can lead you to create your own fantastic recipes. Arm yourself, your friends, and your family with the best kale smoothie recipe that you can think of, and it’ll add a personal touch to one of the healthiest parts of your day (and theirs). But above all, have fun.

Learn More:
Health Benefits of Pumpkin (& how to get more in your diet)
6 Powerful Health Benefits of Beet Juice
Add More Olive Oil to Your Diet, NOW! (5 ways to sneak it in)