The Powerhouse Ingredient Your Breakfast Smoothie Desperately Needs

Smoothies are excellent on-the-go breakfast provisions that make morning meals easier. Simply pop your ingredients into a blender, press start, pour into a glass or portable bottle, and enjoy — et voilà — breakfast is ready. Despite their simplicity and convenience, it's easy to omit essential nutritional components from your smoothies, throwing in an assortment of frozen bananas and strawberries while leaving behind other ingredients necessary for a well-rounded meal. Enter cottage cheese, the protein-rich powerhouse that improves your smoothies in more ways than just one.

For starters, just 1 cup of cottage cheese contains 28 grams of protein, a macronutrient that's often missing from smoothies. In comparison, that's more protein than a standard 3-ounce serving of top sirloin steak — one of the highest protein cuts of beef. Additionally, cottage cheese flaunts a mellow and mild-mannered taste that can easily take on the flavors of your smoothie's star players, like fruit and honey. With its full-bodied and fatty texture, cottage cheese also improves the mouthfeel of smoothies by giving them a creamy, lush, and luxurious finish that you can't achieve with milk alone.

Like most smoothies, one made with cottage cheese is as easy to assemble as it is to gulp down. However, it's helpful to keep a few tips in mind to get the most out of your new and improved sippable breakfast.

To ensure that your breakfast smoothie is a proper meal, combine cottage cheese with other powerhouse ingredients. Although we probably don't have to remind you, load up on fibrous, antioxidant-rich, and disease-fighting fruits and veggies like mixed berries, tropical fruits, and leafy spinach to ensure your first meal of the day is teeming with nourishing qualities. To give your drink a dose of healthy fats, add nut butter to your smoothie.

Before you add a dollop of the creamy stuff to your fruit-filled blender, consider which type of cottage cheese best suits your tastes — large curd or small curd? Large curd has more moisture and is typically perceived as creamier and sweeter, while small curd typically flaunts a tangier and more acidic bite. Either way, the curds will smooth out during blending. Some cottage cheese varieties may include probiotics or live cultures, which can improve digestion.

The exact amount of cottage cheese you introduce to your smoothie depends on how creamy you want your smoothie and how much protein you need. Add less for a more watered-down consistency, and more for a thicker morning drink with a heftier punch of protein.