Will It Spiralize?
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Photo by Chelsea Kyle1/15Meet the spiralizer.
This is a spiralizer—a Spirooli, to be specific. It's a $25 kitchen gadget that turns vegetables such as zucchini, potatoes and rutabaga into spaghetti-like ribbons. People are going nuts for this thing: Gluten-free folks and chefs, especially.
But at Epicurious, it raised a few eyebrows. This is a single-use kitchen gadget, and we want our kitchen gadgets to really earn their spot on the countertop. So we started testing other foods, from cheese to chocolate to chorizo, asking a simple question:
Will it spiralize?
Photo by Chelsea Kyle2/15Round 1: Mozzarella
Will it spiralize? No. The sharp tines of the spiralizer crushed the tender mozzarella. To get cheese noodles, it was clear that we'd need to start with a firmer cheese.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle3/15Round 2: Monterey Jack
A brick of Monterey Jack cheese fared only slightly better. Here, too, the spiralizer's claws were a problem—they tore into the cheese, thus making it impossible for the gadget to grip the cheese.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle4/15Round 2.2: Monterey Jack
But we weren't done with Monterey Jack yet. We switched to another model of spiralizer, the incredulously-named Veggetti.
This is a hand-held model and worked much better with the cheese, rendering noodle-shaped—albeit not particularly long noodle-shaped—gratings.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle5/15Monterey Jack cheese spiralizes!
Spiralized cheese is basically grated cheese. Which is apropos, because the Vegetti is essentially a handheld grater—and a pretty good one. The Vegetti is faster than using a box grater and yielded a good grate for topping chili.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle6/15Round 3: Chocolate
Encouraged, we turned to chocolate. Could the Veggeti make quick work of making chocolate curls—the kind you could top a tart or cake with? We had high hopes. But dark chocolate wasn't soft enough—the Veggeti grated into small flakes instead.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle7/15Round 3.2: Milk Chocolate
Milk chocolate suffered the same fate. Still, we were beginning to like the Veggetti as an alternative to a box grater and microplane.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle8/15Round 4: Chorizo
For most spiralizer acolytes—who tend to be health conscious—chorizo noodles probably sound like a nightmare. But it sounded dreamy to us. So we tried to make this dream a reality.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle9/15Chorizo definitely doesn't spiralize.
Chorizo noodles are still just a dream. For now.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle10/15Round 5: Polenta
We begrudgingly went back to the seemingly inferior spiralizer, the Spirooli, to try out a cylinder of polenta. Polenta noodles could be kind of cool, right?
Photo by Chelsea Kyle11/15Polenta spiralizes!
The Spirooli totally redeemed itself here, turning the polenta into sort of macaroni-shaped noodles. Nothing like the long veggie noodles this thing allegedly puts out, but not too bad, either.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle12/15Okay, now what?
The question now was: What does one do with polenta macaroni? The answer: Sauté in butter for something sort of spaetzle-like.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle13/15Round 6: Butter
A stick of butter has the right shape for spiralizing, so why not? Of course, we knew from the failed mozzarella and chorizo tests that the butter couldn't be too soft, so we froze the stick beforehand. Would it spiralize?
Photo by Chelsea Kyle14/15Butter spiralizes!
Heck yeah it would. (Seriously, is there anything butter can't do?)
Photo by Chelsea Kyle15/15Introducing the Butter Crayon
But, um, what now? Grating—make that spiralizing—butter is a good move when making biscuits: grate over the bowl of dry ingredients and toss with a fork.
But what to do with the crayon-shaped stick of butter leftover? Draw a smiley face on hot toast, obviously. Who said the spiralizer wasn't useful?
