Spiralizers

• The Spiralizer is useful piece of equipment in the raw food kitchen to make interesting and tasty recipes. It is simple, fun and easy to use. It works best with firm root vegetables.

• The main use of the spiralizer is to create raw food pasta noodles from root vegetables.  This is very useful in raw food preparation as it is the shape that your eyes go for first. Raw food noodles always look so much brighter and more attractive than any boring colourless pasta.

A typical Spiralizer has the following features

• The base has a blade arrangement that is very similar to the blade arrangement of a mandolin. There is one fixed horizontal slicing blade. At right angles to this there is an additional slotted blade.

• A handle is used to rotate a piece of root over the fixed blades so that the root is sliced horizontally and at the same time sliced vertically.

• The handle also presses against the root, so that as it is cut, the noodles come out continuously.

• For the vertical slotted blade there is a choice of fine, medium or course blades, so that you can make fine, medium or course pasta shapes. For hard roots, for example sweet potatoes, I use the medium blade, as the fine blade tends to mash rather than cut, and the course blade is, well, a little too course.

• There are also spiralizers available that have a horizontal arrangement.

Tips on how to use the spiralizer.

• for hard vegetables, like sweet potato, use the medium blade and apply a steady pressure when turning the handle.

• slice vegetables so that there is a flat cross section both top and bottom. This helps the handle and blades to engage with the vegetable for a cleaner cut.

• don't try and put too much in at a time. A few inches is sufficient. Your noodles don't have to be infinitely long.

• for softer vegetables, for example courgette (zucchini) , use the course blade. The finer blades will just mush it all up. The secret is to keep the axis of the courgette central to the machine and apply a minimal gentle pressure letting the machine do the cutting. I hold the spiralizer up in the air for this, to allow the noodles to freely fall out.

• You simply can't use the spiralizer with soft stuff, so don't try things like tomatoes. Find other ways of adding these ingredients into your recipe.

• remove the vertical blade for cleaning the machine. Take great care not to let your fingers go anywhere near the sharp blade edges when cleaning.

Links

• "A spiralizer cuts your vegetables into long, thin strips for recipes where you want something noodle-like. These range from finger-width strips to thin angel hair pasta-like noodles."

• http://www.raw-food-health.net/Spiralizer.html

Benriner COOK HELP spiralizer