Spiralizing: Benriner Spiral Slicer- 03.14.14
Spiralizing is AMAZING. “How did we not do this as kids?” was the first thing Shawn and i wondered the first time we played with it. Inspired by Vangie Ogg’s Instagram, i impulse bought the Benriner Spiral Slicer (more info in japanese at the Benriner site.) The first time, we were having so much fun, i forgot to take pictures! Who knew it was so easy to make Zucchini Pasta?!?! And today, the NOTpuppy, Bucky, even got some yam pasta! And these “noodles” can be as long as 7-8 feet even! Ridiculously fun and delicious. Take a peek on the next page at the Spiral Slicer and some of our creations.
This is one of 3 blades you can swap in for different thicknesses of spirals…
Secure a section of the vegetable between the spikes, apply downward pressure, and crank it!
Here’s a special treat i spiralized for Bucky ~ yam pasta topped with salmon and nori.
It’s amazing how much volume is created while spiralizing, this is less than half a yam!
Bucky has always LOVED dehydrated yams as a treat ~ so this was a new twist on his favorite! It was hilarious and adorable watching him poke at the yam “pasta” and playing with the twirls as he figured out how to almost slurp them up (even those super long ones!)
Click for larger image of the instructions for various vegetables/techniques.
A peek from the first day spiralizing Zucchini…
Things we learned (the hard way!) about Zucchini Pasta:
If you’re going to sauté or blanch your “pasta”, it will release a LOT of water if you don’t sweat it first. The usual sweating options are to let them sit in a colander with salt, lay them out on a paper towel on a baking sheet in the oven (around 220F for 30 min or so) in a single layer, or microwave them.
Piles of raw zucchini will shrink down SUPER fast - for hungrier guys, you probably need 2-3 big zucchini EACH. I wasn’t sure how many to buy for my experiment, and definitely didn’t have quite enough.
Bolognese/Meat Sauce is delicious on zucchini pasta!
After sweating 3 zucchinis worth in the oven and sautéing and then also eating one raw and one sautéed without sweating… the conclusion of the group was it isn’t really worth the time and energy to sweat and cook the zucchini when putting steaming hot sauce on didn’t taste all that different from the raw zucchini pasta. The hot sauce definitely softens it up a bit more already ~ but doesn’t have it let out tons of water quite like sautéing it raw.
If you want it to really look like fake pasta, peel the skins off!
Looks very similar to an ice kacang machine
----- Lene 25.03.14 01:27