At Epi headquarters, we areveryinto smoothies. We like themgreen,full of flakes, and even whirred withshredded sweet potato.
One thing wedon'tlike about smoothies? Cleaning up. Because the blender's usually shellacked with nut butter remnants, beet stains, and tiny blueberry seeds that settle down near the blades, where it's almost impossible to reach with a sponge.
That's why I reached out to Brette Sember, a cleaning expert and author ofThe Organized Kitchen. Sember gave me a crucial piece of smoothie advice: As soon as you’re done making one smoothie, you need to make another. And this smoothie has just two ingredients: soap and warm water.
For her "soap smoothie," Sember uses the blender’s power to help it clean itself. The soap and water whirs around in the blender jar, attacking the food residue that’s caked on the sides and around the blade.
You don’t need a firehose of water for this job. “If you are whizzing up soap, it's going to foam and could overflow,” says Sember. So stick with two cups of warm to hot water to start. (Hot waterisfair game here—after all, most blenders are meant for pureeing hot soups—but keep the lid slightly askew to let steam escape.)
What about nut butters, those most tricky (and sticky!) of smoothie ingredients? Even after a vigorous blend, you may still have nut butter residue stuck to the sides. That's when Sember grabsa bottle brush. But if you really don't want to scrub, there's a way around this, too—swap out the nut butter and use, say, yogurt instead.
