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
Oxo Good Grips Standing Veggie Spiralizer
This three-bladed spiralizer produces solid and lengthy noodles that hold their shape well.
This high end spiralizer features heavy-duty design and easy usability, making it well worth the investment.
It comes both essential features of a top quality spiralizer: stronghold suction and a coring mechanism.
Veggetti Pro Table-Top Spiralizer Vegetable Cutter
Also known as the “As Seen on TV Brand” of spiral slicers, the Veggetti has become quite popular both online and in retail stores.
It features a three-blade spiral slicer that works well with tougher vegetables such as potatoes.
As in interesting engineering function, it also has a “drawer” on the side of the unit by which a user can store the blades for the different styles that they want to make.
Hamilton Beach Electric Spiralizer Slicer
This electric spiralizer is a good pick if you don’t want to deal with any cranks. With the chute at the top, all you need to do is feed a vegetable it, and viola! The final cut pasta shapes will present themselves right into the 6-cup bowl.
Being that the bowl catches the final product, you’re going to create less of a mess while spiralizing. However, if you’re prepping for a lot of people, you’ll have to be mindful of it filling up.
The diameter of the chute is 2.5″ which should be able to handle any kind of zucchini. However, things like butternut squash or cabbage are going to be more suited for the crank units.
This model’s cutting cones do the following three shapes:
- Spaghetti
- Linguini
- Ribbons
All of the removable parts can safely be cleaned in the dishwasher.
Kitchenaid Spiralizer Slicer Attachment
As you might expect from the brand name, the Kitchenaid spiralizer attachment is pretty awesome. It only comes with one problem, you need a Kitchenaid mixer!
It mounts right into the top portion of your Kitchenaid and runs off the same motor that runs the typical mixing function.
Here’s more detail on how to use it:
First, you need to cut the ends off of your vegetables or fruits and make them as square as possible. Second, you mount the vegetable onto the fruit and vegetable skewer of the attachment. Next, line up the corer on the other end of the attachment to hold things in place.
Turn your Kitchenaid on, starting with speed 1, and watch as spirals fall into the bowl!
You can handle a wide range of sizes with the Kitchenaid.
It’s built to handle fruits and veggies that are 1.5″ to 3.75″in diameter and less than 5.5″ in length. Don’t worry, you can always cut something down a bit if its out of the range.
This thing is built for tough veggies, including butternut squash and sweet potatoes.
If you have a Kitchenaid and are looking for a vegetable noodle maker, this is the unit we’d recommend. We’d also suggest this if you were thinking about getting a Kitchenaid mixer and hadn’t fully made the jump.
It also comes with a 1-year warranty and double functions as an apple peeler, corer, and slicer!
The Veggie Bullet Spiralizer and Food Slicer
The Veggie Bullet isn’t exactly a dedicated veggie noodle maker, but rather a hybrid food processor with a spiralize function. It has three settings: spiralizer, shred, and slice.
The spiralize function is ideal for a regular sized zucchini, but isn’t going to be the best choice for other vegetables due to the chute and blade size. Not to say that it won’t spiralize other things, but it really just depends on the individual size and shape.
It will definitely cut it, but may be more of a sickle than the noodles that the crank units are best at.
However, given that the Veggie Bullet can do some other functions, we thought it was worth considering.
We certainly don’t mind if our spirals aren’t perfect, shredded and sliced veggies are also awesome!
The blades and motor should get through fruits and veggies quickly, but just not with the most accuracy. That being said, if you’re not too particular about the final shapes, but just want to get the job done, this may be a unit to consider.
Oxo Good Grips Handheld Spiralizer
This smaller model of the Good Grips spiralizer requires a little more effort to use, but takes up less space than its big counterpart.
There are also versions available that include more blades, but at that point, why not just go for a standing crank unit?
Kitchen Active Spiralizer
GEFU Spiralfix Spiralizer Slicer
Frequently Asked Questions
How Much Does a Spiralizer Cost?
A spiralizer can cost anywhere from 10 bucks to a few hundred dollars depending on which brand and type you want to buy.
There are spiralizers at around the ten dollar mark that will be able to julienne anything from cucumbers to sweet potatoes in a couple of different sizes.
Usually, even the spiralizers on the low end of pricing will come with extras like a peeler and storage bag, and possibly even a cleaning brush.
A spiralizer for around thirty dollars will typically come with a greater variety of zoodle style and size options. If you value that kind of choice for your recipes, these types of spiralizers are a great investment.
Electric spiralizers tend to be from about the thirty-dollar price mark and up. More expensive spiralizers can often be expected to be more professional grade and capable of handling more at once.
For the most part, the average good-quality spiralizer settles in the area of twenty to forty dollars.
Spiralizers can be cleaned with a special brush that will often come with the package when you buy it.
If not, you can purchase a rounded brush with medium bristles, about the length you’d see on a toothbrush. Just don’t try to use a sponge or you’ll risk cutting yourself. A sponge is also less effective than a brush, so it’s not worth the risk.
If you’ve got a hand-held spiralizer, simply run it under warm water and, with your brush, gently clean the inside.
If it’s a hand-crank spiralizer that sits on the counter, here are the steps:
- Remove the handle first and clean it gently with the brush under warm running water.
- Then remove the bladed components and clean those with the brush, being careful not to get your fingers too close to the blades. You’re trying to get the vegetable bits out of the blades, but it’s OK if you can’t get every little piece out.
- Then just let all the components air-dry before you reassemble.
You can also follow these steps using a bowl of soapy water if you prefer, rinsing in running water later.
If you want to try putting the spiralizer in the dishwasher, check the user manual first. Some spiralizers are dishwasher-safe, but others may break.
In general, reading the manual is recommended. Your spiralizer may come with specific cleaning instructions that will make it last a lot longer (and keep your fingers safe).
Here’s a helpful tip to keep your spiralizer super clean: Make sure to clean it right after using it. This way, no vegetable bits will get dried and stuck, making them difficult and more time-consuming to remove.
Have you ever experienced the dreaded soggy zoodle? The good news is that there are several ways to prevent this.
One is to consider not precooking the noodles if you’re using them for pasta. Instead of boiling them, try sauteing them right in the sauce you’re going to serve them with for a few minutes to get them tender. They’ll be cooked perfectly with this method.
Another good rule of thumb is to use a sauce that isn’t already on the watery side. A thick, hearty sauce is a good accompaniment to veggie noodles.
No matter what you’re cooking method, it’s a good idea to try to get the moisture out of the vegetables first with an easy hack:
- Put the noodles on a paper towel and sprinkle some salt on top, like you would with eggplant after slicing it.
- Wait for anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes and then gently press them with another paper towel on top, brushing off the salt so that it won’t be added to the dish.
- If you want to make sure that all of the salt comes off the noodles, rinse them in cool water and then pat dry with a paper towel.
This trick will get a lot of the moisture out of the noodles before cooking so that they don’t get soggy in the pan.
And of course, if a recipe calls for added water, consider skipping that step, at least until you’ve cooked the noodles together with the other ingredients in the recipe.
You can always add the water in later, after you’ve determined that the noodles haven’t gotten a bit soggy.
You can indeed freeze many types of veggie noodles, but there are some things you’ll need to know to get the best outcome. What types of veggie noodles you’re freezing will affect how you thaw them later.
The heavier vegetables with higher fiber content will hold up the best. Carrots, beets and sweet potatoes are great candidates.
They’ll need to be thawed completely and then squeezed gently to remove excess water. Then you can feel free to cook with them as you like.
The more watery, delicate noodles like zucchini noodles present more of a challenge. While you can successfully freeze them, they’ll probably be a little soggy when you thaw them, so it’s good to be prepared for this with a forgiving recipe.
Consider cooking zucchini noodles or adding them to a soup right from frozen so that they don’t have a chance to get mushy.
It’s probably not a good idea to freeze cucumber noodles, though. They’re not likely to keep a pleasant texture when thawed.
No matter which type of vegetable you use, make sure to get as much moisture out of the noodles as you can before freezing. This is especially important for water-rich zucchini noodles. If you follow these steps, you’ll have the best results.
Final Word on These Spiralizers
Vegetable noodle maker are fantastic appliances to have at home to make your day to day cooking more interesting and healthier.
These veggie pasta makers can help you adapt your favorite recipes to include more whole plant foods. This means more health promoting micronutrients, and phytochemicals without the excess calories.
Whether you use you’re making veggie noodles as the base of your meal, creating healthy snacks on the go, or accentuating a dish you’ve already made, it’s a good investment for making quick and beautiful dishes – at home or on the road.
Hey, I’m Joey. I’ve been cooking since I was a little kid and love everything about it. You can find my writing about food, kitchen appliances (such as blenders) and much more. Thanks for stopping by!
