If you're a smoothie consuming layperson, you don't have to spend the time to master the art of smoothie making. Basically, all you really need to know is that you can stuff a blender full of your favorite ingredients, hit go and watch and see what happens. Your worst case scenario with no education whatsoever going into the smoothie-making process will likely be something like not being able to get the ingredients to blend well. And this is fixed easily enough.

But what if you want to get down and dirty with your smoothie making? What if you want to make the best and most amazing smoothies possible? Well, in that case, it pays to look into the finer details of what makes a great smoothie. And that's what I'm going to reveal to you here.

To make a great smoothie, you need to work with the blender you have. Some blenders are pretty cheap and not so effective. For these blenders, you may need to add your ingredients in small quantities. And you may simply have to accept that there are just some things your blender can't blend. If your smoothies constantly come out lumpy and grainy, that's a sign that your blender is having a hard time actually blending everything together.

If your blender is capable enough of doing its job, though, then there are some things you can do to make your blender's work easier.

First off, the most important thing to understand about blending up a smoothie is the fact that all blending takes place thanks to the presence of liquid. Whatever liquid base you're using serves as the environment in which blending can even occur. So if you don't have enough liquid present in your blender jar, your smoothie won't be able to turn over and nothing will get blended.

It's always a fine dance of exactly how much liquid to add. Add too little and your smoothie won't even blend. But if you add too much, you'll have a watered-down non-smooth mess. Back and forth you can go, and I'll tell you, on more than one occasion I've made a huge pile of not-so-good smoothie in my quest for the right proportion of liquid to solid ingredients.

When you go to make your smoothie, add the liquid into the blender jar first.

Then, add in solid non-frozen ingredients.

Finally, add in the frozen ingredients.

So that's liquid on the bottom, solid non-frozen stuff in the middle and frozen items on top.

This way, the blender will be able to suck all the harder ingredients down into the vortex created by its rapidly spinning blades. Your ingredients will blend better and your smoothie will be much more amazing.

Beyond just getting the right proportion of liquid, another challenge lies in figuring out the right balance of frozen and non-frozen ingredients. Great smoothies [http://strawberrybananasmoothieguide.com] aren't really frozen milk shakes. They're more liquidy and flowing. Smoothies should be in the middle between a thick shake and a thin juice. That's where the ideal smoothie [http://mango-smoothie.net] lies.

There's no hard and fast rule for how to create a great smoothie like this. Let trial and error be your guide, and be brave. The worst thing that can happen is you drink down a slightly unappetizing but still somehow refreshing almost-smoothie.