Zoodles, the trendy term standing in for "zucchini noodles," is a carb-cutting alternative to pasta and the target of a myriad of new cooking products
Last month at the International Home and Housewares Show in Chicago, I added a new word to my vocabulary: Zoodles.
It's the trendy term standing in for “zucchini noodles” — a carb-cutting alternative to pasta and the target of a myriad of new cooking tools. Making zoodles at home commonly involves using a spiralizer, a plastic kitchen gadget with a steel blade that transforms starchy vegetables into spiraled noodles.
Tabletop spiralizers, like this one from the Oxo brand, are popular for producing large quantities of vegetable noodles.
At the housewares show I spotted at least a dozen variations of spiralizers. Most of the big kitchen gadget manufacturers now offer their own spin on the tool, usually employing a mixture of plastics including ABS or nylon. There are handheld or hand-cranked tabletop versions, and even a few electric options for the elbow-grease-averse. Many include multiple blade options to produce different shapes of noodles, for salads or cocktail garnishes or — for those who like their spiraled foods with all the carbs intact — curly fries (I'm beginning to understand the appeal).
It's hard to pinpoint where the zoodle craze began. Though vegetable spiralizing is not a new invention, it seems to be booming with the gluten-free and paleo crowds.
I talked to Mack Mor, a senior product engineer at Oxo who worked on that brand's spiralizers, about developing the product.
Oxo's first spiralizer, a handheld model, shipped in June 2015.
Oxo's first foray into the spiralizer market was a handheld tool made from primarly ABS and SAN, launched in June 2015. A tabletop offering followed, for which Oxo used ABS along with POM, a tougher engineering resin, for parts of the apparatus that would be under higher stress. They also added a large suction cup on the bottom to keep the machine from sliding around on the countertop.
“I think we started noticing things trending in the blogs around 2014... we recognized that it might be something people are interested in so we decided to design both those products in-house,” Mor said.
Both have been excellent sellers for the brand, he said, and Oxo eventually added two more versions of the handheld spiralizer with additional blades.
“There's more people into clean eating, people going paleo or gluten-free. There was a lot of need for something that could replace noodles in people's diets,” he said. “Initially, especially me, we weren't totally convinced that this was a worthwhile thing, that it wasn't just a fad. ... [but] it turns out it does kind of scratch the pasta itch.”
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