Vegetable Spiralizer Buying Guide

Veg­etable spi­ral­iz­er is orig­i­nat­ed from the very cre­ative Japan­ese cousin and became very pop­u­lar in west­ern kitchens only in recent years. They make cre­ative­ly shaped veg­eta­bles and fruits to use for sal­ads, veg­etable spaghet­ti, pas­ta, nice­ly shaped pota­to chips, and col­or­ful veg­etable noo­dles. Spi­ral­iz­ers allow you to cut car­bo­hy­drates and instead get more veg­etable and fruit sal­ads into your diet, which are more nutri­tious.  This trend great­ly enriched today’s home and com­mer­cial kitchen because it has dra­mat­i­cal­ly sim­pli­fied the prepa­ra­tion of healthy and artis­tic-look­ing recipes.

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What is a Vegetable Spiralizer, and What It Does?

A veg­etable spi­ral­iz­er is a kitchen appli­ance designed to cut veg­eta­bles and fruits into long rib­bons, strips resem­bling noo­dles, spaghet­ti, or spi­rals chang­ing them into pas­ta and noo­dles of var­i­ous sizes, lengths, and stands. Also, it is an excel­lent tool for mak­ing an ele­gant dish of sal­ad. The gad­get can effi­cient­ly work on firm veg­eta­bles and fruits such as zuc­chi­ni, car­rots, beet­roots, cel­ery root, cucum­bers, onions, cab­bage, apples, and others.

There are three types of spi­ral­iz­ers, name­ly: hand­held, man­u­al­ly crank, and elec­tric spiralizers.

Handheld Spiralizers

A hand­held spi­ral­iz­er is a light and portable spi­ral­iz­er that is twist­ed man­u­al­ly and applies an ordi­nary pen­cil sharp­en­er principle.

It has no han­dle to turn the veg­eta­bles as you crank, so one has to man­u­al­ly twist the veg­gie through the blades. You are hold­ing the machine with your left hand and the veg­gie in your right hand. Twist it through into the machine to make your noodles.

Notably, a hand­held spi­ral­iz­er can han­dle only a lim­it­ed selec­tion of veg­eta­bles. It cranks taller or thin­ner pen­cil-like veg­eta­bles such as car­rots, cucum­bers, zuc­chi­ni, mooli, daikon, etc. Large veg­eta­bles need to be cut to fit.

Besides, this kitchen device is suit­able for prepar­ing small quan­ti­ties of spi­ral­iz­er veg­gies. They also may require more sig­nif­i­cant effort to spi­ral­iz­er hard or wider fruits and veg­eta­bles and pro­duce larg­er amounts of waste prod­ucts. There is some chance to injure your­self as one uses this machine.

How­ev­er, you should again not wor­ry much about its cost, for it costs approx­i­mate­ly $5 — $10. This price is rea­son­ably low­er than oth­er types of spiralizers.

Pros:

• The spi­ral­iz­er is affordable;
• Takes lit­tle stor­age space;
• It is appro­pri­ate when mak­ing small quan­ti­ties of veg­etable noodles.

 

Cons:

• The spi­ral­iz­er han­dles a lim­it­ed type of ingredients;
• It is tire­some to use;
• Hard­ly can make large quan­ti­ties of veg­etable noodles;

Manually Crank Spiralizers

A man­u­al­ly crank spi­ral­iz­er is a kitchen machine that enables you to process the veg­etable or fruit by man­u­al­ly turn­ing the han­dle. This type of spi­ral­iz­ers is very easy to use and han­dles the widest range of ingre­di­ents among all kinds of spiralizers.

It usu­al­ly comes with a set of inter­change­able blades of 2.5mm‑3 mm for mak­ing noo­dles, 4mm-5mm for mak­ing curly pota­to fries. Some spi­ral­iz­ers include 1mm‑1.5mm blades for mak­ing angel hair noo­dles from firm ingre­di­ents like car­rots or radish.

Notably, there are two types of hand-crank spi­ral­iz­ers, ver­ti­cal, which posi­tions veg­eta­bles and fruits ver­ti­cal­ly, and hor­i­zon­tal, those that place the veg­etable (or fruit) horizontally.

Horizontal Manual Crank Spiralizer

The hor­i­zon­tal style man­u­al crank spi­ral­iz­ers fit the veg­gie hor­i­zon­tal­ly on the spikes and use hor­i­zon­tal force to process the ingre­di­ents. With this kitchen device, one can spi­ral­ize var­i­ous veg­eta­bles and fruits such as zuc­chi­ni, beet­root, onions, cab­bages, sweet pota­toes, cel­ery roots, etc. The device is major­ly man­u­fac­tured with suc­tion feet to enhance sta­bil­i­ty dur­ing usage.

Fur­ther­more, the man­u­al­ly crank spi­ral­iz­er is safe to use; how­ev­er, they leave some waste, such as unprocessed core parts that are locat­ed around the fix­ing spike. The hor­i­zon­tal veg­etable spi­ral­iz­ers cost approx­i­mate­ly $25 — $180 depend­ing on the mod­els, the Chi­nese ver­sion is the cheap­est, and the orig­i­nal Japan­ese may cost as much as $180.

Pros:

• Process a wide vari­ety of veg­gies and fruits;
• Come with blade selec­tion for dif­fer­ent noo­dles and pas­ta types;
• Very easy to use;
• Safe to process ingredients;

Cons:

• Leaves behind some unprocessed veg­eta­bles typically;
• Some mod­els do not han­dle firm ingre­di­ents well.

Vertical Manual Crank Spiralizer

Ver­ti­cal man­u­al spi­ral­iz­ers fix the veg­etable or fruits ver­ti­cal­ly and rotate the han­dle by apply­ing pres­sure down­wards. The rotary han­dle facil­i­tates slic­ing the veg­gies through the cut­ting razors nice­ly to pro­duce excel­lent noodles.

The same as hor­i­zon­tal machines, ver­ti­cal is very easy to oper­ate and able to process a wide range of ingre­di­ents from the soft zuc­chi­ni and cucum­ber to firm sweet pota­toes and but­ter­nut squash. More so, with this type of spi­ral­iz­er, there is no wast­ed “core” left because the veg­eta­bles are fixed in a ver­ti­cal position.

The device is also afford­able and priced in the same range as hor­i­zon­tal devices; how­ev­er, the USA mar­ket does not have a large vari­ety of ver­ti­cal spi­ral­iz­er as the Euro­pean mar­ket offers.

Pros:

• Process a wide range of ingredients;
• Needs lit­tle effort when spi­ral­iz­ing veg­gies com­pared to hor­i­zon­tal spiralizers;
• It comes with the exchange­able selec­tion of blades;
• Leaves less wastage than hor­i­zon­tal devices;

Cons:

• Are not wide­ly present in the USA market.

Electric Spiralizers

An elec­tric spi­ral­iz­er is an auto­mat­ed stand­alone appli­ance or one that attach­es to a com­pat­i­ble stand mix­er. It is con­struct­ed with an elec­tri­cal motor and feed­ing chute where the user places the veg­etable for pro­cess­ing. It needs lit­tle effort to push the veg­gies down to the blade area using your hand or a push­er. From that point on, the spi­ral­iz­er does the rest of the work automatically.

How­ev­er, elec­tric spi­ral­iz­ers are not as ver­sa­tile as man­u­al cranked devices, and they are not able to process thick diam­e­ters ingre­di­ents such as onion or cab­bage. These devices usu­al­ly come with 3 inch­es in a diam­e­ter feed­ing chute, and thick­er veg­eta­bles must be pre­cut before pro­cess­ing. More­over, such firm ingre­di­ents as but­ter­nut squash will require extra effort to cut them into the prop­er size to fit into the chute.

Fur­ther­more, elec­tric spi­ral­iz­ers are usu­al­ly more expen­sive than man­u­al devices, rang­ing from $50 to $150.

Pros:

• Suit­able for those who require to han­dle loads of veggies
• Spi­ral­izes with­out strain­ing; no phys­i­cal effort is need­ed for its operation;
• It comes with a vari­ety of blades for dif­fer­ent types of noo­dles and pasta;
• The device saves your time when prepar­ing noodles;

Cons:

• Does not han­dle a wide vari­ety of ingredients;
• May need pre­cut­ting for some thick­er vegetables.

What Spiralizer‘s Accessories and Feature May Be Important? 

Blades: Upon pur­chase, you need to check the num­ber of blades a spi­ral­iz­er has and what you can use them for. The typ­i­cal spi­ral­iz­er will usu­al­ly include the noo­dle size blade of 2.5mm‑3 mm, the spi­ral size blade of 4mm-5mm, some include angel hair noo­dles blades of 1mm‑1.5mm, a few have addi­tion­al cut­ting blades for mak­ing long ribbons.

Blade Stor­age Con­tain­er: Con­sid­er a spi­ral­iz­er with a blade stor­age con­tain­er. Whether the blade stor­age is plas­tic or metal­lic, it needs to be large, secure, and tough enough to hold the steel blades with­out being torn or being too small for the edges.

Suc­tion Feet: When buy­ing a cheap­er mod­el, con­sid­er a spi­ral­iz­er with suc­tion feet. Although the orig­i­nal Japan­ese devices are con­struct­ed to oper­ate with­out the suc­tion feet, the Chi­nese knock­offs will def­i­nite­ly require them for effi­cient operation.

Final Thought

Spi­ral­iz­ers are spe­cial kitchen devices that can change our diet. They help us fla­vor our meals by mak­ing tasty pas­ta, sal­ads, pota­toes chips, col­or­ful, spaghet­ti-like veg­etable noo­dles, etc. Do you want to make your fam­i­ly health­i­er? You need to go for a man­u­al, elec­tric, or hand­held spi­ral­iz­er, depend­ing on the pur­pose of the device. If you need to spi­ral­iz­er reg­u­lar­ly, then you need to own an elec­tric one or good qual­i­ty man­u­al crank spi­ral­iz­er. You need to pur­chase a hand­held spi­ral­iz­er if you don’t intend to spi­ral­ize fre­quent­ly. Get a spi­ral­iz­er accord­ing to your spec­i­fi­ca­tions and enjoy meals after that.