Whether you use green or red cabbage, you can slice an entire cabbage for coleslaw or braised cabbage in mere seconds. If your cabbage is extra-large you may need to cut it in half, but if it’s average-size just pop on the straight blade and twirl away. Zucchini is the go-to vegetable when it comes to spiralizing and that’s for good reason – it’s soft and easy to spiralize with a neutral flavor that adapts well to many traditional pasta dishes. I leave the peel on for added nutrition (after giving it a good wash), but don’t forget to include yellow squash in your zoodle repetoire as well.

Many spiralized vegetables can be frozen to use later, with a few exceptions. For the most part, the denser a vegetable is, the easier it is to freeze. This includes vegetables like carrots, potatoes, beets, turnips, butternut squash, and radishes. Vegetables with a higher water content aren’t going to fare quite as well in the freezer. These include zucchini, cucumbers, apples, and onions. When thawing, many of these water-heavy vegetables tend to get soggy and should instead be spiralized fresh.It’s important to consider the level of effort that you’ll need to put in based on which kind of spiralizer you choose. Spiralizers are available in both manual and motorized versions. If you’re only spinning out a few spirals for a garnish or a kid’s meal, the hand-powered models are more than sufficient. If you're going to be using the spiralizer frequently for big-batch cooking, occasions, meal prep, or large gatherings, it’s going to require a whole lot of elbow grease to power you through a task like that. In these cases, a motorized version will help save you plenty of time and effort in the kitchen. Since it’s powered by the mixer, there’s not much effort required aside from putting fruits and vegetables onto the unit. Longer foods, like larger zucchini, had to be trimmed or cut in half to fit the machine during testing, but we still found it super simple to use. Keep in mind also that a small “core” of the fruit or vegetable is left uncut at the end, as well. The blades are dishwasher-safe; the body should be wiped down by hand. Vegetables like peppers, small radishes, and cucumbers don’t need peeling and probably wouldn’t benefit from it. Regardless of whether or not you’re peeling your produce before spiralizing, all of your fruits and vegetables should be thoroughly washed before eating. A crank spiralizer would also be a great way to take some of the strain out of your hands, but would still not be as efficient as motorized. That said, regardless of the model, pretty much all spiralizers require vigorous and diligent cleaning. Even though some are dishwasher-safe, you’ll likely still need to get into the blade with a brush.

This has one spiralizing blade, but there are pricier versions that come with two or three blades if you want to upgrade. It’s dishwasher-safe but easy to clean by hand. When spiralizing vegetables and fruit for salads or pasta dishes, you’re rarely only prepping produce. Usually, you're also blending together a sauce or dressing for the meal as well. This electric spiralizer and hand blender combination tool helps you accomplish all of that without the use of additional equipment. You can spiralize almost any vegetable that is dense enough to hold its shape when being sliced. What does that include? Most popularly, it includes zucchini and carrots, but also most squashes, root vegetables, peppers, shallots, onions, beets, turnips, and potatoes. Fruits can be spiralized easily, as long as they’re denser fruits, like apples and pears. How do you spiralize zucchini? The spiralizer (5KSM1APC) peels, cores and slices fruit and veg for healthy, creative dishes. Discover how to attach it to your mixer: How to attach the spiralizer to your mixer:

How to attach the spiralizer to your mixer:

Perfect for those who don't like a lot of clutter in the kitchen or prefer a more minimalist approach to prep work, these mason jar spiralizer lids are budget-conscious, simple, and functional. The set comes with three vegetable slicer blades (for small, medium, and large spirals) that each fit on top of any wide-mouth mason jar that you probably already have in your cabinet. It also comes with one stabilizer lid to hold the produce steady as you spiralize and the spirals go straight into the mason jar at the bottom. Is this vegetable typically peeled before eating or cooking? Vegetables like beets, carrots, onions, butternut squash, and turnips are almost always peeled before use. Zucchini is one of the most popular vegetables to spiralize since it can be made into so many creative dishes. Generally speaking, a zucchini is “spiralized” by grating it in a continuous circular motion over round slicer blades, similar to those on a boxed grater. Instead of the short cuts made with a boxed grater, the circular cutting motion of a spiralizer makes one long continuous cut, resulting in zucchini noodles that can be used for any number of dishes. With cucumber I use the large spiral slicing blade (for added crunch) or the straight blade to create beautiful ribbons of cucumber. These ribbons are quite the show stopper and in just a few seconds you’ll have plenty of cucumber for your favorite salad.

Our top choice is the OXO Good Grips Tabletop Spiralizer because of how well it performed in home testing. If you're looking for a more budget-conscious product, we're also impressed by the Veggetti Spiral Vegetable Cutter. What to Look for in a Spiralizer Spiralizers come in all sorts of funky shapes and sizes, some of which can prove to be quite the storage headache. Of course, handheld spiralizers are the smallest option, so as long as you have a little extra cabinet space to spare, you shouldn’t have any issues. The stand mixer and food processor spiralizer attachments are also quite compact—if you get several different blade options, they can start to take up some space, but for the most part, these attachments are not a huge space occupier.

The Best Vegetables to Spiralize

Many spiralized veggies make for great healthy meal prep. Slice zucchini, carrot, onion and beets on the weekend and store in a ziploc bag or glass storage container in the fridge for various recipes throughout the week. Of course, each spiralizer is built slightly differently. While you’ll get a similar product with most machines, it’s best to learn which machine works the way you’re comfortable with. There are two main versions in the realm of manual spiralizers. First, there are compact handheld spiralizers. These are typically dishwasher-safe and come with a few blade options that you can switch out. They require the most elbow grease of any model, so they’re best for a person that is going to be spiralizing a small amount of food pretty infrequently. They are also not very forgiving when it comes to the size of the vegetable, so you may need to trim it before you can send it through the blade. Since it’s small, this gadget stores easily. The blades are recessed into a cup-like section, and there’s a handle that grips the food, so fingers can stay away from the blades during use. Plus, the handle acts as a cap for the spiralizer during storage, keeping the pieces together and the blades protected. We also appreciated that the tool didn't leave a lot of waste behind during testing.