Here’s a fun, at-home project for you: How to Make Homemade Gatorade!
Sports drinks like Gatorade are beverages that are specially formulated to help people rehydrate during or after exercise. Gatorade is sometimes tough to find on store shelves these days, but you can easily make a copycat Gatorade recipe like this one at home. It’s a fun project for your kids to do. And it’s neat to show them that things like Gatorade can be made homemade!
Ingredients needed for Homemade Gatorade:
- water
- Kool-Aid packet (any flavor)
- freshly squeezed orange, lime or lemon juice
- agave syrup (or desired sweetener)
- Light salt (important ingredient– and it’s sold near the regular salt)
- Sea salt (make sure it’s “sea salt.” If you happen to have the pink Himalayan sea salt, that works well).
How to make Homemade Gatorade:
Start with 8 cups of water. Add one Kool-Aid packet to the water. That’s what I’m using to flavor the Gatorade. And the nice thing about it is that you can use any flavor you want!
A little bit of freshly squeezed juice is added in too. You can use lemon, lime or orange juice.
Agave syrup is what I use for the sweetener in the recipe. 1/2 cup is just right, according to taste testers around here. But if you want to reduce the sweetness a little bit, or if you want to try using honey or a sugar-substitute sweetener then that’s totally up to you.
Salt is what adds the sodium and potassium to Gatorade, which helps make up the electrolytes that you want in there when you’re making a sports drink. When you drink a lot of water while exercising, your body tends to lose a fair amount of electrolytes because of sweating so much. So the thought is that a sport drink with electrolytes can help balance that.
Nutritional information for this recipe per bottle- 5 bottles of Gatorade:
- 74 calories
- 18g carbs
- 1g protein
- 1g fat
- 176mg sodium
- 95mg potassium
- 16g sugar
Sport Water Bottle Purchase Recommendation (affiliate link):
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Holly
Monday 24th of June 2024
I would like to make blue frost do you know how it would do that?
RecipeGirl
Monday 15th of July 2024
We don't know how to make that one specifically.
Brian
Friday 29th of September 2023
I used 1 tablespoon of lime juice concentrate plus an extra 1/2 cup water for the juice. Followed the recipe from there. I believe this is better than actual Gatorade. Much cheaper to make also. This will be a standard bearer in my household. Thank you for the recipe.
RecipeGirl
Monday 2nd of October 2023
Great to hear, thank you!
Sam
Wednesday 25th of January 2023
How long would this last if I put it in mason jars and stored them in my basement?
RecipeGirl
Monday 30th of January 2023
I'm not sure!
ALLEN D
Sunday 24th of January 2021
About how long does it keep - days to use?
RecipeGirl
Tuesday 2nd of February 2021
Maybe a week?
Pam
Friday 29th of May 2020
Can I use something besides kool-aid?
Joan
Friday 16th of July 2021
Sure you can. It won't be this recipe but the Kool Aid is just for flavor. You can add whatever flavor you like from concentrated frozen juice to flavored syrups. The nutritional info (specifically calories) may change. You'd have to experiment with it to find what you like best.
recipeboy
Saturday 30th of May 2020
No, that's the key to the way this one is made :)