Strawberries and Cream Smoothie with White Beans

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This thick and creamy strawberry smoothie tastes like a dream thanks to my secret ingredient: white beans! They add an undetectable boost of protein and gut-friendly fibre to this not-too-sweet smoothie: 16 grams of protein and 13 grams of fibre to be exact!

pink smoothie in glass on pink background — Thick, creamy and bursting with strawberry flavour, this easy strawberries and cream smoothie has a secret ingredient!

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If you want to know the way to my heart, it’s a smoothie that actually tastes good. For context, I spent a lot of time in health food stores growing up in the 90s, where the prevailing wisdom was if it tasted like a mix of sawdust and pond scum, it was ultra healthy. First generation Vega comes to mind…if you know, you KNOW.

And I Just. Won’t. Do. It. Anymore. Give me FLAVOUR!!!

After publishing 3 cookbooks and developing hundreds of recipes, I realize that you actually can make something delicious AND super nutritious. You don’t have to choose.

This incredible strawberries and cream smoothie is gonna surprise you, big time. It’s a strawberry and banana smoothie that gets transformed into something greater by a very unlikely ingredient that I use again and again in my recipes: white beans.

If you’ve been stuck making smoothies that don’t taste good or don’t fill you up, A) definitely try this strawberry smoothie and B) I’ll share a couple of dietitian tricks with you. To feel full and satisfied, you need to have an adequate amount of protein AND fibre. The internet keeps blabbering on about protein and totally ignoring fibre. Which is a mistake.

The combination of white beans and soy milk (you can use any high protein milk you like, including my homemade hemp milk) create a creamy texture and add 16 grams of protein without any protein powder or greek yogurt so this smoothie is naturally dairy free and vegan. Oh, and you’ve got 13 grams of fibre in a single smoothie…which is actually more than some folks eat in an entire DAY.

A couple of testing notes on this strawberries and cream smoothie

You can use fresh or frozen strawberries here…but lemme be clear: the flavour of the strawberries matters. The only frozen strawberries I’ve found that actually taste like ripe strawberries are the Kirkland ones from Costco. And if you’re using fresh, the flavour will be way more epic with super ripe, deep red berries.

strawberries in white bowl, white beans and banana — If you use fresh berries, I highly recommend that you use frozen banana. Having one frozen element makes the smoothie more frosty and dessert-like!

If you’re wondering about the salt – don’t skip it. It’s a tiny amount, like less than 1/16 of a teaspoon and it makes the smoothie taste sweeter. Yep, I said sweeter. I actually test all of my smoothie recipes with and without salt to see which flavours the salt enhances. In some, I skip it as it drowns out the flavour I want. But here, it really does make it pop!

strawberries and white beans in blender — But/and/also…as a dietitian, I know that some of us feel weird about a smoothie without veggies but guess what? Fruit is GOOD FOR YOU…and many of us would benefit from eating more.

strawberry smoothie in blender — But/and/also…as a dietitian, I know that some of us feel weird about a smoothie without veggies but guess what? Fruit is GOOD FOR YOU…and many of us would benefit from eating more.

More deliciously nourishing smoothies