Six Tips for Cleaning Your Smoothie Maker

In my previous post, I shared 2 Tips for Quick and Easy Smoothies.  Those will help with making the smoothie, but what do you do to clean up the messy blender cup and lid?  First you can prevent some clean-up by making sure the cup lid is secured properly before starting the blender.  A crooked lid can result in ingredients spilling out onto the blender and counter top.  The blender cup may be harder to clean with just a rinse from the faucet depending on what you put into your smoothie.   Below are a few cleaning suggestions for stuff that is hard to remove from an individual size blender (aka bullet).  If you have a larger blender, see cleaning your blender in no time and tip 5 below. 

6 Tips for Cleaning Your Smoothie Maker

1.    Use your faucet’s spray attachment rather than regular faucet to rinse blender cup and lid/blades after use.  It provides a harder spray and therefore is more likely to loosen stuck on seeds or fruit/veggie skin particles.  Start by spraying the bottom working your way up to middle of cup.  Dump out the water and any residue before it fills up further.  Follow by spraying the top half of cup and dumping.  Check for any residue still stuck to cup.  If there is, then try the next tip. 

2.    If you have a small individual serving blender, you can use the handle end of a piece of flatware to lightly scrape the residue loose from a long narrow cup and the lid, and then rinse out.  Or you can use a soft bristle toothbrush instead of flatware; if the cup is not too deep and is wide enough you can get your hand into it.  The toothbrush works well for removing grime from the outside of blender base as well.   If you have an easily scratch-able plastic cup, you may want to use the next tip instead. 

3.    Use a sponge dishwashing brush with a long handle as your bottle brush in the blender cup.  This should not scratch the interior of the cup, as other types of brushes might do.  Using the brush in a cup half full of water will work really well to remove skins or seeds that water and soap isn’t pulling loose.  If you are worried about germs or food poisoning, read the next tip.

4.    Use a drop of dishwashing liquid while filling the cup with water.  Be sure to shake the soapy water around to clean and sanitize the cup, if it is not dishwasher safe.  Then rinse again to remove any soap residue.   If the blender cup and lid is dishwasher safe, be sure you run it through with a full load every so often even if you are giving it a good daily rinsing.

5.    To clean stains off or remove smells from the cup and lid, fill the cup halfway with hot water.  Then add the juice of a lemon to the water.  Run this mixture on the blender for a few minutes and it should do the trick.  If it does not clean the cup well enough then repeat the process or consider filling the cup with water and 2 tablespoons of baking soda to sit overnight.  Rinse before using.

6.    Invert your cup to drain overnight to dry or use a clean dish towel to dry it.  You can stuff the dishtowel deep into the cup and then twist it around to dry.  If it want twist easily, remove it and place a long ice-teaspoon into the middle and re-stuff so you can use the spoon to force the towel to move around the inside of cup.  Be sure to dry water droplet of outside of cup as letting them dry may result in a dingy cup that looks unclean.