Minus 3 cuts and a knuckle grating it was a good weekend! Jay, the welder, says I should have done a new FLRA (Field Level Risk Assessment) because the conditions in my kitchen changed. We got new knives before Christmas for a super good price, but man, are they sharp! At least I had a safety moment to share at work 🙂
I tried out my new KitchenAid spiralizer attachment on zucchini, apples and potatoes. I made sautéed zucchini and tomatoes, apple and cherry pie and scalloped potatoes. I guess I was rather productive!
I was somewhat concerned that it would take a lot of time and effort to use the spiralizer attachment for the KitchenAid mixer. Because I have a relatively small kitchen, the mixer is stored in the bottom of my pantry, behind the dog food and potatoes. It’s not too bad pulling it out of there, as long as I lift with my knees and brush off all the dog hair. All that aside, the spiralizer was pretty easy to use. It comes with a peeling attachment and a number of different blades for spiralizing different widths. The peeling attachment was the hardest to figure out – the instructions for how to attach it to the rod were a little confusing, but I eventually got it.
I quite liked the spirals made out of the zucchini, but because it comes out as one giant spiral, it would be really hard to eat unless you’re looking for a Lady and the Tramp kind of moment. I ended up breaking the zucchini into more manageable lengths, just by hand. The skinny spiralizer leaves a skinny core so there wasn’t much waste left over, which was nice.
I sautéed some halved baby tomatoes with garlic, S&P and basil EVOO until they split. Then I added the zucchini and cooked it for just a few minutes until it was tender. A light and simple side that looked pretty too!
On the apples I used the peeler attachment first. Like I said earlier, it attaches to the rod differently than the spiralizer attachments so it took some of my super duper brain power to figure it out. Not that it was hard, I just didn’t really understand the drawing so well. You can call it a ‘blonde moment’.
The peeler does take off a pretty thick layer of skin. I had relatively small apples so it wasn’t the best approach. But, these apples needed to be used up as they were getting old, sitting in my basement. It sure was way faster than peeling them by hand. I adjusted the speed from 1 to 4 and it did’t affect the quality of peel. In fact, at 4 it worked perfectly well and made the job so much faster!
After all the apples were peeled I used the thicker spiralizer attachment because I wanted to slice the apples for apple pie. The width of the slices was perfect, and the size of the core was great. I found no seeds or hard parts in the apple slices.
There’s very little waste since the apple gets sliced to the very end. Once the spiralizer gets to the end it stops on it’s own, and you simply pull the core off and stick the next apple onto the device. Now, because this is a spiralizer, the apple is cut in one continuous ring. All you need to do is hold the rings together and slice them in half, then you have perfectly cut apple slices, all the same thickness. Cool. I will totally use this every time I make an apple pie or crumble.
I then took the same approach with potatoes. Meh. Peeling them was ok, but honestly I don’t mind peeling potatoes by hand – they’re faster and easier to handle than apples are. It was a little touch and go simply because my potatoes were oddly shaped. With skinny ends the whole potato didn’t really get peeled so I still had to do manual labour.
When it came to spiralizing and slicing the potatoes, I found that they didn’t hold together in a continuous ring as well as the apples did. They acted like a defective slinky – no fun at all. I ended up having to handle the potatoes a lot as they came off the spiralizer, and then I used a knife to slice them into manageable, oddly shaped sizes.
The remaining core was unnecessary because, well, potatoes don’t have cores… so I ended up chopping it into bits and using it so it didn’t go to waste. There were 4 spiralizer attachments so maybe I just chose the wrong one for potatoes? I guess I just have to experiment more to answer my remaining questions! I’ll use the peeler attachment for large batches of potatoes in the future, but I may just stick with the mandolin for slicing. I’ll have to see if there’s a thick slicing spirilizer attachment with a smaller core (but not right now because the attachment is stored in my basement and I’m feeling lazy).
In summary: Is the attachment worth $150? Mmmmm…. probably not (make sure you buy it on sale). But, if you make a lot of things with apples, it does a great job peeling and slicing. If you make a lot of things with potatoes (think, big batch of homemade perogies!) then the peeling attachment could totally cut down on time. If all you to do is spiralize zucchini and other veggies, you can buy much cheeper spiralizers that simply require a little bit of arm strength. I do like that this puppy can do everything!
Do you have a spiralizer? What do you use? Do you have this KitchenAid mixer attachment? What do you think?
Tanya
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