I get SUPER excited about these kinds of posts. I can feel all of my creative juices flowing while being inspired and hopefully inspiring at the same time. Today I’m sharing 14 methods that I have tried for making delicious nutritious zucchini noodles. This is just one of the reasons why I love raw food. Before raw food I never would have thought about using a vegetable instead of highly processed pasta. Raw food techniques kind of help you see your palate of vegetables in a new light. Lending to numerous creative concoctions. They can be eaten raw, lightly steamed, sauteed, and even baked. I hope this post will show you how easy it is to make noodles out of your veggies, specifically zucchini. I’m going to put myself out there when I say this but I’m guessing everyone has at least one of these tools. So get noodling!

Methods 1 & 2: Angel Hair, Ribbons, & Slices (not shown)

How beautiful is that?!

   

• Product Name: Joyce Chen 51-0662 Saladacco Spiral Slicer
• Description: Makes angel hair sized noodles, ribbons, and slices (make a ‘radius’ cut vertically down the length then spiralize)
• Pros: 
  • Works great with 2 ” – 4″ sized vegetables that are softer like zucchini
  • Easy to use
  • Easy to wash/rinse (top rack dishwasher safe)
  • Uses the whole vegetable
• Cons:
  • It can do carrots but they’ll need to be large diametered carrots
  • Has a harder time with bigger veggies like jicama but does a great job on beets

Method 3, 4, and 5: Lasagna Style, Small Julienne, and Large Julienne Styled Noodles

These could definitely be longer, but I was working with 1/2 a zucchini.

 

Use the blade without ‘teeth’ to make the lasagna noodles, similar to the mandoline below.

• Product Name: Swissmar Borner V-1001 V-Slicer Plus Mandoline  6 Piece Set
• Description: A mandoline that makes long julienne type noodles if using a full length of vegetable.
• Pros:
  • A great mandoline for the price
  • Perfect for mincing, chopping, slicing, and julienning
  • I love using it on celery, zucchini, onion, peppers, carrots, cucumber, and regular potatoes
  • Dishwasher safe
• Cons:
  • Has a hard time with hard root vegetables – definitely wear gloves as things will go flying

Methods 6 & 8: Shredded Noodles

You could probably also call this ‘rice’ but that’s just semantics. So noodles it is. You can achieve this one of two ways, manual or electronic.

Any handheld grater will work for manual, I’m guessing some mandolines even have a grating piece that could be used. I don’t remember the brand for my handheld one as it could be one of my oldest kitchen gadgets. I remember purchasing it when I first moved out of the house in 2002 and it is still in marvelous shape. If you want to go the electronic route, using the grating disc with your food processor would be the way to go. It’s extremely fast and efficient, especially if you’re processing more than 1 zucchini.

Both are dishwasher safe.

 

Method 7: Perfect for Small Manicotti Rolls and Lasagna Noodles

Look at those zucchini steps! Perfection.

• Product Name: Kyocera CSN-202-RD Adjustable Mandoline Slicer
• Description: On my quest to find the perfect mandoline, I also own a handheld one {pauses} with a ceramic blade. Oooh lala! It is amazing. Perfect for making manicotti rolls and wide lasagna noodles.
• Pros: 
  • Adjusts to 4 different thicknesses .5 mm, 1.3mm, 2mm, and 3mm – amazing – think paper thin slices of ginger (I’ve done it)
  • If sharp knives get you excited than you will love this ceramic blade
  • Handles thick vegetables like potatoes, jicama and beets with ease – unlike my other mandoline
  • dishwasher safe
• Cons:
  • Could be longer
  • Cuts my sponges and brushes during cleaning 😉

Methods 9, 10, and 11: Regular Spaghetti-Sized, Ribbon/Slices and Large Spaghetti-Sized

   

• Product Name: World Cuisine A4982799 Tri-Blade Plastic Spiral Vegetable Slicer
• Description: 1/8-inch spacing, 1/4-inch spacing, and straight blade for ribbon cuts
• Pros:
  • Super quick
  • Removes core which is helpful with bigger seeded veggies
  • Blades are stored on gadget
  • Dishwasher safe
  • Sturdy
  • Suctions to the counter
• Cons:
  • I’ve stared at this for 5 minutes and can’t think of one

Method 13 and 12: Julienne Noodles and Linguine Noodles

Super easy and I’m guessing you own one of them. Meet the Thai Kom Kom Miracle knife and the unassuming vegetable peeler. Thai Kom utensil does about 4 things including: core an apple, garnish with a V-tip, julienne cuts, and has a little tab for garnishing or helps start peeling an orange.

If you’re wondering if you’ll even like zucchini noodles, either of these gadgets are a great start and you most likely already have the vegetable peeler.

• Pros: 
  • Small, fit nicely in a drawer
  • Multi-purpose
  • Dishwasher safe
• Cons: 
  • They only easily go down to the seeds then they can be a little hard to handle
  • Takes a little bit more time but only a little

 Method 14: Lasagna, Julienne, and Linguine Noodles

A knife with a little practice can do all the things a mandoline can do.

Make very thin slices, these are your lasagna noodles. If you want julienne, take those and make long cuts to make julienne strands. For linguine just make the cuts a little wider and voila!

I’d much rather use a fun gadget though.

So much fun!

I hope this was helpful and inspires you to get your zucchini noodles on! I worked on the photography yesterday and was able to show case all 14 methods using only 4 zucchini. Which we then ate al dente, just heated with the organic pasta sauce we bought, along with fresh garlic and portobello mushrooms. Magnifique! Jeremy was getting seconds before I was even done.

XOXO