How to make Zucchini Noodles

🥒Choosing your Zucchini:

You can specialize just about any long, tube shaped veggie but zucchini is what is usually called for in Low Carb Recipes.

We have on occasionally used cucumber for cold dishes but this is a zoodles post.

You want to choose dark green, firm, medium sized zucchini if you can. If they are too large it makes them more difficult to spiralize.

🔪Which Spiralizer is Right for You?

There are actually a lot of different ways to cut your zucchini into noodles but I am not down for the time consuming work of using a knife or vegetable peeler. I don’t know what anyone would want to make zucchini noodles this way, but it can be done…with a lot of patience.

We have a couple of different spiralizers at our house.

One is handheld like this:

This method is fairly easy, but the spiralizer itself is hard to clean by hand so we wash it in the top rack of the dishwasher.

It’s fairly inexpensive and doesn’t take up a bunch of room in my drawer. I like this one.

We also have a countertop model that someone gave to us. It has a lot of attachments and takes up more room. But it makes large amounts of zoodles super fast.

I like them both but if space is an issue…go for the smaller model.

Kitchen-Aid also has a mixer attachment for making zoodles, but I haven’t tried it yet. You can check it out here if you are a die hard Kitchen-Aid fan.

👩🏽‍🍳 Cooking Methods:

There are no hard and fast rules about cooking the zucchini noodles, but I have tried a lot of different methods over the last two years and I can tell you which work best.

• No one says you have to cook zucchini noodles:

If I am serving these with hot marinara, I usually serve them raw and let the heat of the sauce do the work for me. But, this does result in watery noodles if you are meal prepping and saving some for you lunch my mixing the zoodles directly with the sauce.

• Oven Method:

The oven method makes for drier more al dente style noodles.

Just spiralize and spread out on a baking sheet. One with a bake-able rack would be perfect to keep the air flowing around the noodles.

Bake for 10-15 minutes @ 350F and pat the excess water off when they come out of the oven and serve.

I usually just spread them out on a pan like this. ( Cut them with kitchen shears if your zoodles are too long).

• Pan Frying:

If you want to pan fry your zoodles it’s might be the fastest cooking method (besides not cooking them at all). However they do end up a little bit wetter than the oven method and the prep time is longer.

Spiralize your zucchini, sprinkle with salt and let drain in a colander for 30-60 minutes while you are making the rest of your meal.

Once some of the water has drained off, dump into a hot, slightly oiled pan and turn with tongs quickly. Don’t cook for more than a minute or two or they will be mushy.

• Microwave:

Microwaving can be a real time saver. Still, if you want your noodles nice and dry, drain them the same way you do for pan frying.

Spiralize the zucchini, sprinkle with a tiny bit of salt and let it drain in a colander for 30-60 minutes. Pat dry and microwave for a minute or at the VERY most two minutes and serve immediately.

🥗 What meals are great with Zucchini Noodles?

We use zucchini noodles as a side dish or as part of the main meal. They are purely versatile!

• Low Carb Spaghetti Meat Sauce
• With Cheese Sauce
• With Stir Fry

I think that is really all there is to say about the zucchini noodles!

But, if you still have questions please let me know in the comments.

Adieu!

Brandy

The nutritional information is provided as a courtesy. We are pretty careful about our figures but if you ever feel like anything is off please feel free to do your own calculations.