So I finally started using a gift I had gotten for my wedding (many months ago, now... which is crazy to think!). It was something that I was excited about, but thought would require extra time to figure out.
It was none other than... a veggie spiralizer! I buckled down and decided to give it a shot.
Friends... it's literally the easiest thing ever. I'd been using spaghetti squash for all of my veggie pasta alternatives. Though I still love spaghetti squash, this takes way less time and is so much easier.
They take 5-7 minutes to cook, and they can be used for anything! You can cook a bunch of zoodles to be used to replace pasta or rice. It's super tasty with pretty much any pasta sauce, and it offers THAT much more nutrition in your meal.
Since my discovery of how easy it is to use this contraption, I've been making different dishes with it. Two are photographed here:
The first is a picture of some chicken bruschetta I made. That was QUITE tasty. You can make it real easy with some store bought bruschetta OR by following the recipe I used here.
The second picture is something I threw together. I used both zucchini noodles (zoodles) and sweet potato noodles (swoodles, I will call them).
Ingredients:
3 Zucchinis spiralized into noodles
1 small sweet potato spiralized into noodles (peel before spiralizing)
1/2 lb of chicken sausage (of your choice)
2 tsp of olive oil
1/2 onion, sliced
1 cup of kale/spinach
1 clove of garlic
8oz of mushrooms, sliced
1 tsp of italian seasoning
1/4 tsp of salt
If you like... a bundle of asparagus as well
Directions:
Cook the chicken sausage thoroughly in one pan
While the chicken is cooking, saute the onions, garlic, and mushrooms for about 3 minutes on med high heat with 1 tsp of olive oil. Towards the end, toss in the kale/spinach.
While the above are cooking, toss the zucchini and sweet potatoes in a pot and cook for 10 minutes with 1 tsp of olive oil. If it get a bit dry in there, add 1TBS of water.
Once everything is cooked through, throw it all together in the pot and mix in the Italian seasoning and salt.
If you want asparagus on the side, coat the bundle in 1TBS of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Place on a baking sheet and bake in the oven for 8minutes at 350F.
Feel free to experiment with different flavors! Next time I make this, I may throw a little bit of balsamic vinegar in there as well. It'd probably be delicious with pesto or marina sauce too.
Happy zoodling!