Are you looking for the best vegetable noodle makers? This guide is dedicated to helping you find the right one for your needs so you can make vegetable pasta all day long!
Real quick, in case you didn’t know — Vegetable noodle makers or spiralizers mean basically the same thing.
They’re tools for turning your favorite fruits and vegetables (zucchini, squash, cucumbers, carrots, etc) into “zoodles” – long, thin spiral slices of pure produce goodness that eat like noodles made out of vegetables!
Now let’s begin!
Don’t have time to read? Here’s a quick summary of the products we recommend.
Best Vegetable Noodle Maker Picks
What Are Vegetable Noodles?
Vegetable noodles are just what they sound like: noodles made out of vegetables! The noodle makers on this list are specially designed with blades that cut veggies into long thin strands that you can use anywhere you would pasta.
Because the veggie noodles come out thin and long, they don’t really taste like the given vegetable anymore. This is especially true with zucchini pasta because it tends to absorb whatever sauce you put on it. This could be a simple marinara or healthy vegan alfredo. You can even go Asian with it and make a peanut sauce like we did here.
You can even go 50/50 mixing half vegetable noodles and half regular pasta to up the nutritional content.
This picture below shows just how nicely shaped you can get your final product if you get the right tool for the job.
Types of Veggie Noodles You Can Spiral
We want to make a quick point that this list is not all inclusive. It should also be known that not every veggie pasta maker on this list will be able to do every one of these vegetables. Much of it comes down to the leverage that the machine gives you and how the vegetables will fit into the machine.
For the optimal balance of versatility and power, we recommend getting one of the suction mounted hand crank slicers. They will have the easiest time with all of these veggies as well as many fruits.
Additionally, Inspiralized made this fancy page which helps you figure out exactly what you can do with their vegetable pasta cutters. We’re huge fans of their veggie noodle makers and have thus featured them at the top of our list.
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Cucumber
Although cucumbers possess many of the same characteristics as zucchini, the inner flesh can be a bit softer and more watery.
Anyone who has ever cut into a cucumber knows that their softness on the inside can vary. This means that when you make vegetable noodles they might start to fall apart a bit.
If its not a zucchini or a carrot, then having a manual crank spiralizer is going to be ideal.
Zucchinis and carrots are the only two vegetables that really go well in the hand-held veggie pasta makers.
To learn about the spiral cutter featured above, check it out:
Most of the time you’ll be fine doing cucumber noodles. Just feel them before you buy to make sure they aren’t ultra soft otherwise the veggie spirals might fall apart.
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Zucchini
When you think of veggie pasta noodles, zucchini is probably the first thing that comes to mind. These are the perfect shape to be cut into vegetable spirals and are easily handled by any model on this list. Their flesh is generally the perfect texture and their shape is deal.
There is a chance that zucchini pasta could get too mushy in the event that the vegetable is damaged or over-aged. You wouldn’t want to eat these anyway.
Beet
If you’re lucky enough to have raw beets available in your grocery store, you’re in for a treat. They are an awesome veggie to make vegetable noodles out of!
So long as you get off the skin and cut both ends evenly, you should have no trouble spiralizing beets into noodles. You can eat the vegetable pasta raw or serve them roasted or boiled for softer noodles.
Another video from Inspiralized below shows just how easy it is to make beet vegetable pasta.
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To learn about the spiral cutter featured above, check it out: Spiralizer Inspiralizer Pro: Official vegetable spiralizer of Inspiralized®
Carrots
Carrots are going to be one of the easiest veggies to make vegetable noodles out of. They just so happen to be the ideal texture (not too hard and not too soft) with an oblong shape.
The only time you might struggle is if the carrot is too thin. There simply won’t be enough flesh for the blades to catch and turn them into vegetable noodles. That said, don’t try throwing baby carrots into any of these veggie pasta makers.
Look for the bigger more industrial-looking carrots in your produce section to make the task of making veggie noodles easy. They’re usually sold individually and not by the bag.
Bell Peppers
Believe it or not, you can actually make spiral cuts out of bell peppers. Now while we wouldn’t quite consider them to be veggie noodles, they’re still a great texture to eat. Combine them with zucchini noodles for a colorful vegetable pasta dish!
Please note: this isn’t really going to be possible with all of the models.
If you want to do bell peppers then for a hand-crank unit is going to be ideal because it is most versatile. We do our bell pepper with the Inspiralizer pasta maker.
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Sweet Potatoes
The final featured vegetable is one of our favorites: sweet potatoes. As the starchiest vegetable of the bunch, we think that it makes the best textured pasta noodle. Since it’s also pretty sweet, it makes the perfect base for any sort of savory dish, especially something with a bit of spice to it.
For the final video, we have a demonstration of Inspiralizer pasta maker making sweet potato vegetable noodles!
As we mentioned, there are different types out there. While the crank-styles are going to be ideal for sweet potato noodles, if you’re just going to do zucchini vegetable noodles, you may want to consider some of the others.
Different Types of Veggie Noodle Maker Spiralizer Options
For the sake of making your final choice easier, we’ve narrowed down these vegetable noodle makers into three different categories: Handheld, Manual Standing Crank, and Electric.
Handheld
Handheld spiral slicers are great because of their convenience. They fit easily into most kitchen drawers and you can even travel with them.
They’re ideal if you’re cooking for one or two people and tend to be the least expensive to boot.
However, they don’t have the same speed and efficiency as the other two categories.
If you’re going to be doing family meals on a regular basis or holiday cooking, you don’t want to go with a handheld spiralizer. It will take too long to get the job done and you’ll likely be tired at the end!Related Article: Does Making Your Own Nut Butter Save Money?
Manual Standing Crank
A spiral veggie noodle cutter with a standing crank requires some manual effort, but gives you a lot more leverage than handheld models. The good ones have stronghold suction which allows you to mount the unit right to the counter, attach the veggies, and crank! Before you know it, you’ll end up with a huge pile of zucchini noodles. This mounting feature is critical as it prevents the unit from shifting around while you’re spiralizing.
Some of these models will also come with other types of blades.
By switching out the spiral slicing blade for the julienne one, you’ll be able to get all different types of shapes and sizes. Units like the Inspiralizer have different blades built into the machine itself which you can change with the turn of a small knob.
Using some julienned carrots and cucumbers, you can quickly prep a cold veggie lo mein salad for lunch!
Electric
Electric models gives you the ability to create spiral slices with very little manual labor.
Here’s the ways that they most commonly function:
- You set it up by mounting the veggie to the unit and letting the motor pull things to the blades. This would be the case for the Kitchenaid Spiralizer Attachment.
- Units like the Veggie bullet function by feeding the vegetable through the top onto the spinning stainless steel blades.
- There are also food processors which double function as spiral vegetable cutters. As you can imagine, there’s a lot more you can do with these, too.
Much like the manual standing crank units, they’re also likely to come with several different stainless steel blades.
If you think you’re going to spiralizing a lot and have the counter-space, you may want to consider an electric model.
Benefits of Getting a Vegetable Noodle Maker Spiralizer
You’re More Likely to Eat Your Veg
No matter what sort of lifestyle you follow, getting more fruits and vegetables into your diet has a huge array of health benefits. Having a spiral slicer gives you an excellent reason to eat more of them.
When prepared the right way, eating vegetable doesn’t seem like a chore.
Save You Time in the Kitchen
Additionally, a spiral vegetable slicer can also take a lot of the work out of preparing vegetables and fruit into noodles and pasta – saving you time and energy. Should you use a knife to make similar style vegetable noodle, things aren’t likely go to as quickly.
Everyone knows that time is money when it comes to making dinner. If making something takes too long, then odds are you aren’t going to have the motivation to do it regularly. This means that you’re more likely to spend money on take out or other costly convenience foods that aren’t as healthy as vegetable noodles!
Opens Up Easy and Healthy Recipe Options
The video above is a great demonstration for what you can do with one. In this instance, Rawvanacreates her own version of Pad Thai by cutting a raddish into vegetable noodles! While it wouldn’t quite be a zoodle (zucchini vegetable noodle) in this case, perhaps we can call it a “roodle” (radish vegetable noodle)?
PS: We don’t recommend going on a raw food or raw vegetable diet at all, so enjoy vegan pasta treats like this once in a while. The best way to be vegan in the long term is to eat a variety of whole plant foods, cooked and uncooked.
Which of These Vegetable Noodle Makers is Best for me?
Before making your final decision on your vegetable pasta maker, you should ask yourself two questions…
- How often am I going to be making vegetable noodles?
- How much veggie pasta will I need to make at one time?
If you’re going to be cooking for more than one person, then you’ll probably want to rule out any of the hand-held veggie noodle gadgets options that don’t have a crank. These are designed for smaller batches of vegetable pasta and you’re going to wear yourself out trying to cook for a lot of people.
We get into the more nuanced differences below, but they basically do the same thing at the end of the day.
Finally, if you have a Kitchenaid already, then I think that their spiral cutter is probably the best option. It’s extremely well-crafted and powered by the strong Kitchenaid motor so you can’t go wrong.
So without further ado, let’s get to these veggie pasta makers…
Inspiralized Spiralizer
If you already can’t tell by the fact that we featured it so many times above. We love the Inspiralizer brand. The company has put a lot of focus into making pasta noodles out of veggies. So much so that all of their blades are dedicated to the task.
This machine comes with four different cut styles:
- Cutting thick and wide noodle ribbons.
- Making linguini shaped pasta out of your veggies.
- Doing a wider fettuccine style vegetable noodle.
- The traditional thin veggie noodles or what they refer to as spaghetti.
The best part is you don’t actually have to change blades.
to select how you’re going to spiral your veggies. The “noodle twister” button on the machine lets you do it with a little twist.
Like any good counter-top veggie pasta maker, it comes with a suction base which prevents it from shifting around you’re cranking. This is essential for hard veggies such as sweet potato and celeriac.
Another great design element is the size of the coring blade.
It’s designed to be small which makes it far easier to do thinner veggies. It also reduces the amount of waste product as you’ll end up with a smaller core. If you check out the chart that we linked earlier, the limit is around 1.5″ in diameter.
This model also comes with a one year warranty for complete piece of mind that you’re making a good decision.
Paderno World Cuisine Countertop Vegetable Pasta Spiral Slicer
