Beverly Lynn Bennett - Spiralize!: Transform vegetables and fruits from ordinary to extraordinary

AliveNatural Health Guides

TRANSFORM FRUITS
AND VEGETABLES
FROM ORDINARY TO
EXTRAORDINARY

Beverly Lynn Bennett

Id like to express my heartfelt appreciation to several people who helped make this book possible: Cynthia and Bob Holzapfel, my talented editor Jo Stepaniak, and the rest of the staff at Book Publishing Company, which publishes and produces so many fantastic vegan and vegetarian lifestyle books and cookbooks. I would also like to thank my family and friends for their love and support, especially my husband, Ray Sammartano, and my feline companion, Luna, for all their help during the recipe testing and writing of this book. And last but not least, to my fellow vegans, thank you for doing all that you can to spread the vegan message and for choosing to improve your lives and the lives of our fellow creatures who share this planet with us.

Whats the coolest craze to hit the culinary world? Spiralizing! No doubt youve seen the latest kitchen gadgets known as spiralizers, which are sold in stores, online, and via TV ads. With just a few turns of a hand crank or a twist of the wrist, a spiralizer (the umbrella term that encompasses both spiralizers and spiral slicers) can quickly and easily turn your favorite fruits and vegetables into pastalike noodles of various shapes and sizes.

For decades, raw food enthusiasts and chefs have been using spiralizers to create nutritious, colorful garnishes and captivating components for use in salads, soups, sandwiches, side dishes, and entres, and now you can too! Spiralizers are simple to use and great for preparing healthy and delicious vegetable-based meals in a fraction of the time it would take to cut everything by hand. These practical gadgets are especially convenient for people with minimal knife skills because theyre so simple to operate. Even cooks with limited culinary experience can easily add more variety to meals just by incorporating spiralized foods. Youll have great fun reinventing your favorite recipes by substituting spiralized vegetables for rice or pasta. As a bonus, spiralizing enhances the visual appeal of vegetables and fruits, so youll no doubt dazzle your friends and family with your impressive creations.

We all know that fruits and vegetables are nutritional powerhouses packed with the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and other nutrients that our bodies need to function optimally. Spiralizing actually makes it a joy to get more of these important healthy foods into our diets. A spiralizer is the ideal device for health-conscious people who already eat with an eye toward good nutrition, as well as for those who want to make positive dietary changes by incorporating more fruits and vegetables into their daily meals. Spiralizing is also a terrific technique for enticing finicky eaters to consume more health-promoting foods by making them more fun and appealing.

Pasta and rice made from spiralized vegetables are perfect for people who follow a gluten-free, low-carb, paleo, or raw food diet and those who are watching their weight or trying to lose a few pounds. Thats because pastas made from fresh vegetables have fewer calories and carbohydrates than grain-based pastas. They also contain more fiber than conventional pasta, and fiber helps us feel fuller longer and improves digestion and regularity. In addition, fruits and vegetables have a high water content, and thats valuable for keeping us hydrated and aids the bodys natural detoxification process. As a bonus, you can indulge as much as you like in pastas made from vegetables because theyre packed with great nutrition.

Spiralizers are hand-operated gadgets and need no electricity or batteries to operate. This makes them extremely portable, and they can be used almost anywhere and under almost any circumstances. People with busy schedules will appreciate both how easy and convenient it is to use spiralizers and how these uncomplicated devices can minimize the time it takes to prep and cook meals.

A spiralizer can safely be operated by anyone, even an older child with proper supervision. Many young people enjoy helping out in the kitchen, and theyll have a blast making creative spiralized dishes. Just watch their awe and delight as they turn a humble zucchini into a giant pile of spaghetti! Plus, kids tend to eat more of a meal when its one theyve helped to prepare, and what parent wouldnt appreciate that?

There are several different styles of spiralizers, and theyre available in various shapes, sizes, colors, and price ranges. Depending on the type and brand, they each have slightly different features and capabilities. What they all have in common, however, are sharp, stainless steel cutting blades, which either have a straight edge, comblike teeth, or triangle-shaped cutouts. The number of teeth and amount of space between them, or the smaller the size of the triangle cutouts, will determine the width and thickness of the cut that can be achieved.

Some spiralizers come with a range of blades, and there will no doubt be one that you can use to spiralize your favorite fruits or vegetables into various pasta shapes, such as angel hair, thin spaghetti, thick spaghetti, flat linguine, or fettuccine. But youre not limited to just replicating pasta, as you can also use a knife or the pulse setting of a food processor to cut the spiralized strands into rice-sized pieces for use in recipes that are commonly made with rice. Depending on the blades included with your device, you might also be able to cut ribbons, circular slices, half-moons, and thin or thick shreds.

Based on how the device operates, in conjunction with the position of the cutting blade, spiralizers can be classified into three basic styles: horizontal tri-blade spiralizer, vertical spiral slicer, and handheld hourglass spiral slicer. Following is a brief description of the three styles and how they operate, along with brand-name examples of each type:

HORIZONTAL TRI-BLADE SPIRALIZER (such as Paderno). This type of spiralizer is commonly referred to as a tri-blade because it has three interchangeable blades: a shredder (fine shredder) that makes thin spaghetti-like noodles; a chipper (coarse shredder) that makes thick spaghetti, linguine, fettuccine, or udon noodles; and a straight blade (spiral shredder) that makes wide, flat ribbons, pappardelle, or lasagna-shaped noodles, depending on the width of the vegetable or fruit being used. The straight blade can also be used to shred vegetables, such as cabbage, for use in slaws, salads, and other dishes. Some brands are also available in a four-blade version, which is capable of making very fine angel hair noodles.