While loading up a meal with carb heavy pasta or noodles may seem like a quick and easy way of bulking up a meal, it is a habit that has left many households with an imbalanced diet. Carbs are wonderful, and they have a place in a balanced diet, but many people inadvertently leave themselves with a carb imbalance by incorporating breads, rice, pasta, potatoes and other carb heavy foodstuffs into their everyday diet. This is where vegetable noodles come in.
Vegetable noodles allow you have that noodle or pasta sensation in your meal without the need to overload on carbs. Carrots, sweet potatoes, parsnips and zucchini are just some of the vegetables that easily lend themselves to vegetable noodles. The easiest way of preparing these alternative noodles is to use a spiralizer – a specific tool designed to create vegetable noodles.
However, for those looking to implement veg noodles into their diet without any extra cost, there are options! Using simple kitchen utensils that you already own, you can create your very own vegetable noodles. So how does it work?
Let’s take a basic julienne peeler. Carefully peel the chosen vegetable (carrots make for an easy starting veg) and peel straight down from top to bottom. You will be left with a long, thin strip of vegetable perfect for use as a noodle or pasta! With practice comes increased control, and you can manoeuvre the peeler around the vegetable as you work down its length. This will allow you to create more fancy spiralled noodles, giving a professional appearance to your work.
And what if you don’t have a julienne peeler? Not to worry, the same technique can be used with a basic vegetable peeler! While a julienne peeler makes the task slightly easier, ensuring long consistent pasta noodles, a standard vegetable peeler can give the exact same results. Again, the key here is that practice makes perfect. Start with easy to use vegetables like carrots or zucchini and you’ll be making perfect vegetable noodles in no time.
And as a last resort, you can even avoid any kind of utensil and simply use a sharp knife. Although this is trickier still, it can be done. The key here is that you need a steady hand and a knife sharp enough to make smooth, consistent cuts on the vegetable without carving out chunky pieces. You are making noodles, not just long chopped vegetables! Try it yourself and make your own vegetable noodles today.
