Mango smoothie for one, in a 350 ml bottle
About 4 minutes · 1 bottle (350 ml)
Mango is the most forgiving fruit in a small blender. The flesh is dense enough to feed itself down onto the blades, sweet enough that it needs nothing added, and it holds its texture rather than separating while you drink it. Three ingredients, one bottle, one cycle.
Ingredients
- 200 g frozen mango chunks
- 150 ml milk, coconut milk, oat milk or water
- Optional: 2 heaped tbsp plain yoghurt, in place of 50 ml of the liquid
- Optional: juice of half a lime, or a pinch of ground cardamom
Step by step
- Loosen the fruit. Let frozen mango stand out of the freezer for two or three minutes so the chunks separate.
- Liquid first. Pour the milk or water into the empty bottle, with the yoghurt if you are using it.
- Mango on top. Tip the mango in over the liquid, stopping at about two-thirds full.
- One cycle. Seat the bottle on the base and double-click for a single 30-second cycle.
- Shake and repeat if needed. If the fruit was very solid, lift the bottle off, shake once, and run a second cycle. Stop as soon as it is smooth.
Frozen mango is the default
Frozen mango chunks are picked ripe, cost less than fresh out of season, and chill the drink without ice. In a 350 ml bottle that last point matters: every ice cube you add is volume that is not mango, and ice waters the flavour down as it melts.
Fresh mango works if you have a genuinely ripe one. An under-ripe mango is fibrous and no amount of blending fixes it — the fibres survive the cycle and end up in the last mouthful. If your mango is firm, leave it on the bench for a couple of days first.
What to blend it with
Milk of any kind gives the classic thick smoothie. Coconut milk suits mango particularly well and makes it richer; oat milk keeps it lighter. Water works and lets the fruit taste of itself, but the result is thinner and closer to a juice.
Whichever you use, 150 ml is the right amount against 200 g of fruit. Start there and loosen it after the first cycle if you want it thinner — thickening a smoothie that has gone watery means adding more fruit than the bottle has room for.
The blend
Liquid in first, mango on top, seat and double-click. One 30-second cycle usually finishes it. If the fruit was very solid, lift the bottle off, shake it once, and run a second.
Stop when it is smooth. Mango holds air readily and an over-blended mango smoothie foams up the neck of the bottle when you open the cap.
The yoghurt version
Two heaped tablespoons of plain yoghurt in place of 50 ml of the milk turns this into something closer to a lassi — thicker, with a slight tang that balances how sweet mango is. Add a pinch of ground cardamom if you have it.
Yoghurt is heavy, so put it in with the liquid at the bottom rather than dropping it on top of the fruit. Otherwise it sits above the vortex and comes out in lumps.
Two more variations
Mango and lime: 200 g mango, 150 ml water, the juice of half a lime. Sharper and much lighter than the milk version, and better on a hot day.
Mango and passionfruit: hold back 50 g of the mango and stir the pulp of one passionfruit through after blending rather than blending it. The seeds stay whole either way, and stirring them in means they are evenly spread rather than ground.
Cleaning up
Mango is sticky and dries hard, particularly around the blade housing. Rinse straight after drinking rather than leaving the bottle on the desk.
Warm water, a drop of dish soap, one 30-second cycle, then unscrew the base and rinse the blade side directly under the tap.