How to Make Soda Smoothies and Coke Slurpee in a blender

An icy cold coke is one of the best refreshment drinks to beat the searing summer heat. But if you want to make a copycat Coke Slurpee, can you put soda in a blender without exploding your kitchen?

Well, overall, it’s pretty easy to make a slushie with a blender at home. And that includes not only the fruity slushie treats but also the quick kind with drink mix, ice, sugar, and carbonated drink.

Carbon Gas vs Pressure in a Soda

Basically, a soda (carbonated drink) is a beverage that has been bubbled with carbon dioxide (CO₂) gas. Thus, creating carbonic acid, which now gives your drink flavor that fun fizz and tingly sensation you feel in the mouth when sipping.

However, the carbonated drink has to remain under a lot of pressure to keep the gas dissolved in the liquid. That will also retain the fizzy and tangling quality that you would want to taste in your drink.

Conversely, this pressure from the CO₂ could also be an issue when blending in a personal blender like Nutribullet Pro or Nutri Ninja. Similar to shaking a bottle of soda, the vigorous beating inside the blending cups could cause the CO₂ bubbles to expand. Thus, increasing the pressure inside the container, which could cause the sealed container to burst.

But again, does this mean you can’t put sold in a blender?

Can You Put Soda in a Blender?

As mentioned earlier, one of the quickest ways to make a slushie treat is with a  drink mix and a  carbonated drink- mostly club soda. So, the answer to our theme question is  YES, you can put soda in a blender. But not just any blender.

When blending a soda mixture, the gases broken down from the soda will be looking for spaces to escape. And that means personal blenders would be risky to use for the task since they usually work under a  tightly-sealed cup.

On the other hand, this all means a  perfect machine for the task would be a  countertop blender. But even then, it should have a vented lid for the pressure inside the container to escape and minimize the risk of spewing out the content all over.

FYI: The Ninja blenders with the stacked blade assembly usually don’t have a removable lid cap. The manufacturer even doesn’t recommend blending warm or hot ingredients due to the risk of pressure build-up from the steam.

So, I’d also not recommend blending a soda mixture with the blender brand, unless you agree to leave the pour-spout open.

What’s the Best Blender for Blending Soda Mixtures?

Well, the best blender for soda blends totally depends on the recipe at hand. If you just want a quick smoothie with liquids and soft fruits, any vented blender to puree can handle the task. Then, for icy cold treats you can have a blender that can handle ice and frozen fruits without bogging down or breaking the blade.  

Here are a few examples:

Blender Brand	Best For	Motor Power Output
Vitamix Pro 750	Soda slushie & Smoothies	1500 Watts	See other features
Vitamix Immersion Blender	Soda Smoothies	625 Watts	See other features
Nutribullet [ZNBF30500Z] Combo	Soda slushie & Smoothies	1200 Watts	See other features
Oster Pro 1200 Boroclass	Soda Smoothies	1200 Watts	See other features
Blendtec Total Classic	Soda slushie & Smoothies	1560 Watts	See other features

How to Make a Soda Smoothie in a Blender

As was just mentioned, blending soda and other carbonated beverages is safest when using a countertop blender. The feature that makes all this possible is the vented lid, which releases the pressure escaping from the CO₂ liquid.

But the shear stress and constant beating of the blades through the soda is what exposes the dissolved carbon dioxide. And after removing the carbonation, the fizzing properties will also be lost. So, you might need to top your blended drink with some fresh soda if you still want to feel that fizzy and bubbly sensation in your mouth.

Meanwhile, to make a quick smoothie or milkshake with soda, you’ll only need to toss your ingredients into the blender. Then, blend all until smooth or reaching the desired consistency.

A perfect example to illustrate this would be a Refreshing Raspberry Lemonade Smoothie. It only requires some club soda, lemonade, mint leaves, powdered sugar, frozen raspberries (or fresh), and a few ice cubes (optional) in the blender container. Then, blend while starting your machine from low through high speed.

How to Make a Soda Slushie in a Blender

In the sample Raspberry Lemonade Smoothie above, you could enjoy a “healthy” brain freeze by turning it into an icy cold treat. You just need to add more frozen fruits and ice cubes to the mixture. Then, pulse on high until you have a smooth slushy texture.

Even so, chances are that your kids won’t appreciate it as they would the regular Coke Slurpee. So, you can make them a copycat Slurpee flavor, which will only take like 15 minutes if you have the materials ready.

The good thing, though, is that the icy coke slushie doesn’t call for a lot of ingredients. In fact, you only need the soda, ice cubes, and a nice blender for ice.

But when showing you how to make the frozen Strawberry margaritas, we concluded the regular ice tends to thin the punch. And that would be the case with even our coke slushie here.

As such, instead of the regular ice cubes, I’d recommend using frozen soda blocks to give your drink a strong coke flavor.

Directions:

The first step to making our coke slushie will be freezing some of the soda to get ice cubes. As such:

1. Fill an empty ice cube tray with your soda flavor and freeze for about 4 hours or overnight. If you don’t have an empty ice cube tray, you can use a shallow bowl.
2. Place the remaining soda in the refrigerator to chill and slow down the “de-carbonation” process.
3. Once the soda in the freezer is completely frozen, scoop out about 7-8 cubes and transfer to a blender container
4. Next, add 1.5 cups of the chilled soda (from the refrigerator) into the blender container with ice cubes and secure the lid
5. Now power on the machine and pulse the soda mixture until you have a smooth slurry.
6. Finally, pour the blended coke slushie into the drinking glasses. Then, garnish with the cherries (optional) and serve immediately before the mixture start to melt and separate.

Important Notes:

After blending any soda mixture, do remember the action of the blades will remove carbonation. So, you might want to add some chilled soda from the bottle if you want your final drink to have a fizzy touch.

But if you just want the flavor of the carbonated beverage, as with the Coke Slushie above, you can leave it be.

In Conclusion:

YES, you can put soda in a blender if you want to make a smoothie or Slurpee with your favorite ‘Cola flavor. However, the blender container will need to have a vent to let out the carbon gas exposed during the blending.

So, a personal blender won’t be a great idea for the task, considering the blending cups don’t have any breathing space.

But even when working with a countertop blender, do make sure there’s a vent to let out the exposed carbon gas. Then, you should also use a controlled amount of soda to avoid having too much gas and pressure, which could spew out the content all over the kitchen.