Here are my lunchtime zoodles:
I followed the instructions that came with the spiralizer as literally as I could, pan-frying the zoodles for two minutes in olive oil after adding some salt and pepper. Seasoning the zoodles proved to be a good idea, as the zucchini would have been awfully bland otherwise. I topped the zoodles with a layer of grated Parmigiano, added my homemade spaghetti sauce (with home-ground sausage), then topped the whole thing with more cheese.
The carb count for all this is surprisingly low; the tomatoes in the sauce are the carbiest part. Calorie-wise, the zoodles themselves are low-cal, but the sauce and cheese are not. A single giant zucchini cooks down to one serving after some of the water has a chance to evaporate during pan-frying, but since I pan-fried the zoodles for only two minutes, they retained their crunch even after sitting for nearly an hour inside a zip-top bag. Overall, the zoodles weren't bad; the zucchini taste didn't get in the way, and the spiralizing process made the zucchini noodle-like enough. I'll be making zoodles again, I think, although maybe next time, I'll see what happens with Alfredo or faux-Fredo sauce.
I'm also really curious as to what the zoodles would be like if I pan-fried the hell out of them, turning them crispy by chasing out all the water. Could I make a low-carb fried lo mein dish that way? (Frying something doesn't add carbs. The old thinking was that dietary fat was what got you fat; we now know dietary fat isn't at all correlated with body fat. It's the carbs that spike your insulin and make you fat. Fried chicken is fattening because it's battered, not because it's fried. Certain "bad" fats can affect you hormonally and metabolically, and they might even affect your heart health, but they won't make you fat.) We'll see; right now, it feels as if the sky's the limit. Today's experiment went way better than expected.
I like that the spiralizer is made of easily separable parts that are, individually, easy to clean. The whole thing is easy to store as well, as the machine tucks neatly into itself and fits inside a plastic box with a fairly small footprint. I think this tool was a good investment.
Expect more spiralizer craziness soon!
Fat can also be a problem if you've had your gall bladder yanked out through a hole cut in your abdomen. :(
ReplyDeleteI wonder if pressing the zoodles before pan-frying them to get a little more water out might help.
Ah, yes. How galling.
ReplyDeleteThe spiralizer instructions do recommend patting the zoodles dry before cooking. I did that, and I guess it helped a little, but the zoodles still retain a lot of moisture, so the pan-frying process ends up also steaming the zoodles a bit. But as I said, not enough to eliminate the crunch as long as you keep the cook time down to two minutes.