Kiwifruit and lime cooler
About 4 minutes · 1 bottle (350 ml)
Kiwifruit is a good blender fruit with one catch: the seeds go bitter if you grind them. Blend it briefly and they stay whole and pleasant; blend it too long and the whole drink turns sharp in a way no amount of sweetening fixes. This is a short-blend recipe for one 350 ml bottle.
Ingredients
- 2 ripe kiwifruit, flesh scooped out
- 180 ml cold water
- Juice of half a lime
- Optional: 1 tsp honey, a few mint leaves, or half a banana
Step by step
- Water and lime first. Pour the cold water and lime juice into the empty bottle, with the honey and mint if you are using them.
- Scoop the kiwifruit. Halve the fruit and scoop the flesh straight into the bottle with a teaspoon. Do not peel it.
- One cycle only. Seat the bottle on the base and double-click for a single 30-second cycle. Grinding the seeds turns the drink bitter.
- Shake instead of re-blending. If chunks remain, lift the bottle off and shake it hard rather than running another cycle.
- Drink it fresh. Finish it within the hour — kiwifruit keeps working on the texture after blending.
The seed problem
A kiwifruit holds several hundred small black seeds. Whole, they are crunchy and mildly nutty and nobody minds them. Broken open, they release a bitter note that spreads through the drink and dominates it within a few seconds of blending.
The practical rule is one cycle, no more, and check the drink rather than assuming. This is the opposite of most smoothie advice, and it is the only thing you need to get right in this recipe.
Choosing and preparing the fruit
Green kiwifruit is sharper and holds up better against the lime; gold kiwifruit is sweeter and needs less added. Either works. The fruit should give slightly under a thumb — rock-hard kiwifruit is astringent and no blending fixes that either.
Halve them and scoop the flesh out with a teaspoon rather than peeling. It is faster, it wastes less, and it leaves the tough core of the skin behind. Two fruit is right for one bottle.
The blend
Cold water and lime juice into the bottle first, then the scooped kiwifruit. Seat it on the base and double-click for one 30-second cycle. Lift it off — the motor stops the moment it leaves the base — and look at it.
If there are still visible chunks, shake the bottle hard and let it stand for a few seconds rather than running a second cycle. Kiwifruit is soft enough that a shake finishes the job.
Balancing it
Lime and kiwifruit are both acidic, so this drink needs something to sit against. A teaspoon of honey is the usual answer, added to the water at the bottom so it dissolves. Half a banana works instead if you want it thicker.
A few mint leaves change the drink completely and cost nothing. Put them in with the water so they are pinned under the fruit, or they will ride up the walls of the bottle the way spinach does.
Serving it
This is a drink to make and finish rather than carry all day. Kiwifruit contains an enzyme that keeps working after blending, and after an hour or two the texture goes thin and slightly slippery.
For the same reason, do not blend kiwifruit into a dairy smoothie you intend to keep — it will not hold. If you want a kiwifruit and yoghurt drink, blend it and drink it straight away.
Cleaning up
This one is easy — there is no dairy, no starch and no oil. A rinse with warm water and one cycle clears it entirely.
Unscrew the base to rinse the blade side and leave both halves to dry apart, as with everything else.