The Healthy Spiralizer Cookbook (2 page)

There are few culinary experiences as satisfying as twirling a few long strands of pasta around your fork and taking a big, satisfying bite. With your spiralizer you can still enjoy that mouthful—and bowlful—of spaghetti but, if it’s zucchini spaghetti, you’ll finish the meal feeling good, rather than good and stuffed, too.

Veggie spaghetti, of course, is only the beginning of what your spiralizer can do to help you get flavorful, fun, and low-carb meals on the table. For breakfast, slide your eggs on top of cheesy sweet potato nests flavored with cinnamon and ginger. With lunch, try a confetti of spiralized carrot and apple with shaved fennel. A hearty beef stew with celeriac noodles may become your favorite weekend dinner. Or if animal products aren’t a part of your diet, raw pad thai with zucchini noodles might just become your go-to meal in minutes. Your spiralizer will even make it possible for you to turn veggies into rice. No wonder professional chefs are beginning to embrace this kitchen tool right along with home cooks.

Just because you’ve chosen a healthier lifestyle doesn’t mean you have to give up your favorite comfort foods—or, at least, the essence of what makes those foods your favorites. If you’re a low-carber or you’re on a gluten-free diet, it’s likely you miss pasta and rice dishes. But when you think about it, it isn’t necessarily the flavor of the pasta or the rice you miss. Rather, it is the delicious things you put on top of them or mix in. And you can still enjoy many of those sauces and savory ingredients. Here you’ll find plenty of choices for building tasty meals and snacks, regardless of your dietary preferences—low-carb, Paleo, vegan, vegetarian, or gluten-free.

With your easy-to-use spiralizer (regardless of whether it has two, three, or four blades), a few simple cooking techniques, and the array of recipes you’ll find in this cookbook, you can prepare delicious recipes certain to please your palate while helping you maintain a lower-carbohydrate, healthier lifestyle. Start noodlin’!

Spiralizers, also called spiral vegetable slicers, suddenly seem to be everywhere. For people looking for interesting new ways to add healthy produce to their diet, spiral vegetable and fruit slicers are just the ticket. Using this simple kitchen tool, you can turn a whole vegetable, such as a zucchini or sweet potato, into long, noodle-like spirals that can replace pasta or, with the help of a food processor, rice. Vegetables never looked or tasted better.

You probably already know why you’re into spiralizing, but there are so many great health-related reasons. Who wouldn’t benefit from a diet that is high in fruits, vegetables, and fiber, and low in processed white foods like pasta and rice? For many, however, cutting carb-heavy foods and adding in fresh, naturally lower-carb foods isn’t an option; it’s a matter of health or sickness.

In 2012, the journal
Obesity Reviews
published an article that found that low-carb diets were effective for reducing weight and cardiac risk factors. Many people now adopt low-carb diets as a way to lose weight and improve health. However, the biggest challenge of a low-carb diet is staying the course over the long term. The spiralizer makes it possible to eat all kinds of meals that seem incompatible with a low-carb diet by creatively transforming vegetables and fruits. The result: Long-term low-carb living is getting easier every day.

Beyond cutting carbs, increasing your intake of vegetables just makes good sense. According to the USDA, some of the primary health benefits of a vegetable-rich diet include protection against heart attack and stroke, reduced risk of some types of cancer, and better weight control.

Of course everyone should spiralize. There’s simply no better (and more visually appealing) way to up the veggie content in your meals—not to mention the meals you prepare for your family, too, picky kids included. But although spiralizing is good for everyone, people on one or more of the following diets will especially benefit from using this handy kitchen tool:

Gluten-free (celiac) diets:
According to the University of Chicago’s Celiac Disease Center, three million Americans are affected by celiac disease, an autoimmune condition that damages the small intestine whenever gluten is ingested. Pasta is made from wheat, which contains gluten. WebMD notes that while there is no cure for celiac disease, the
only effective treatment is total elimination of gluten from the diet. While there are gluten-free pastas available, many are high in refined carbohydrates. Spiralized noodles made from vegetables provide a healthy and completely gluten-free option for people with celiac disease and nonceliac gluten sensitivity.

Low-carb and semi-low-carb diets:
Pasta and rice contain too many carbs for someone on a low-carb diet. Typically, these diets range from 20 grams to 100 grams per day, depending on how restrictive they are. One cup of pasta contains about 80 grams of carbs, so even a single serving may blow the carb count out of the water for the day. Replacing pasta with spiralized veggies, however, keeps carbs in check.

Paleo diet:
This type of diet typically includes fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and animal proteins while eliminating grains, legumes, processed foods, and industrial seed oils. Spiralized vegetables can add variety to ancestral diets, which might otherwise become monotonous.

Low-calorie diets:
Spiralized vegetables will help anyone who is trying to lose weight by consuming fewer calories. Veggie noodles have far fewer calories than their pasta counterparts.

Vegan and vegetarian diets:
For those on a plant-based diet, spiralized vegetables provide a new and interesting way to eat plant foods.

While spiralizing is for everyone, it isn’t necessarily for every fruit or vegetable. Some simply don’t have enough structure, and they will turn to mush. If you don’t want to wind up with a shapeless pile of wet fruit or veggies, then it’s best to stick to produce with the following qualities:

Firm flesh:
Fruits or vegetables that spiralize well have reasonably firm flesh: Think zucchini, jicama, beets, and radishes. Vegetables with slightly softer flesh, like eggplant, will spiralize, but with difficulty.

No core:
If a fruit or vegetable has a core, then it probably won’t spiralize. But some produce, such as apples, can be spiralized whole because the small seeds just pop out, and cabbage can be spiralized by cutting off the end with the core.

Solid inside:
The fruit or vegetable must be solid all the way through, like a carrot or beet.

At least an inch and a half in diameter:
Anything thinner won’t spiralize well, even if you’re using an hourglass spiralizer.

Two inches long or longer:
Since the spirals come from the length of the fruit or vegetables, if you have a very short piece of produce, you’ll also have very short spirals. What fun is that?

Once you discover just how much fun it is to spiralize fruits and vegetables, you just might get spiralizer fever and try to spiralize everything. Some fruits and vegetables aren’t great candidates, however. While you’re certainly free to experiment, try to avoid fruits and vegetables that have:

High water content, such as a melon

Very soft flesh, like a banana or avocado

Large pits, like a peach