We Try It: Veggetti

Spiral cut vegetables aren’t REALLY a substitute for pasta, but they’re still tasty.

A few weeks ago, I bought a Veggetti spiral slicer, not because I cared about their claims of lower calories or fewer carbs, but because I like vegetables and wanted a new way to eat them.

The Veggetti looks like a plastic hourglass, with metal handles on the sides and two different sizes of blades. You twist the vegetable in one end and it comes out in long strips roughly the size and shape of spaghetti.

When my little tool arrived, I set out to use it on some zucchini and summer squash, because those are basically the best vegetables ever, plus they seem to be the ones most commonly used in spiral cutters.

To make it like pasta, a lot of recipes seem to cook it by boiling, but to me that seemed like it would be bland. So I sauteed my spiral squashes with a little olive oil and some chopped garlic. This makes for a nice, crisp taste, but the drawback is that as the water content of the zucchini cooks out, it can get a little runny and oily in the pan. But that’s fairly easy to drain out.

Another recipe I kept coming across was Veggetti latkes, which sounded like a winner. So I gave it a shot. I cut up a large potato and mixed in two eggs, plus some minced garlic and salt.

Then I fried them in little pancakes in some olive oil. It took a few minutes on each side to brown, and a couple of batches to get the size right (don’t make them too big or they’ll be undercooked in the middle).

It can be a little tricky to clean, however. A brush works better than a sponge or cloth to get into the blades, but sometimes the bristles will break off. I’d also recommend cutting one long slice down the vegetable so that the spirals aren’t excessively long.

My verdict on the Veggetti? It’s a useful tool that makes tasty vegetables. I’m not going to pretend that spiral-cut zucchini is at all the same as delicious pasta, but it makes a good side dish.