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The Best Spiralizers

Spiral vegetable cutters, or spiralizers, cut fruits and vegetables into long noodles and ribbons for “pastas,” salads, and side dishes.

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Last Updated July 15, 2022. Appears in America's Test Kitchen TV Season 18: Vegan for Everyone

UpdateJuly 2022

We still like the Paderno World Cuisine Tri-Blade Plastic Spiral Vegetable Slicer, but it has become more difficult to find, so we decided to test a few additional spiralizers. The OXO Good Grips 3-Blade Tabletop Spiralizer impressed us with its ability to spiralize a wide range of vegetables and its simple design, which made it exceptionally easy to assemble, use, and clean. It’s also more durable than the Paderno model, so it is our new winner.

See Everything We Tested

What You Need To Know

Spiral vegetable cutters, or spiralizers, cut fruits and vegetables into long noodles and ribbons for “pastas,” salads, and side dishes. Since we last tested these devices, many more models have come on the market, and the manufacturer of our favorite machine released a more advanced version. We decided that it was time to revisit these gadgets, so we surveyed the market and selected a lineup of countertop and electric spiralizers to test against our winner.

Some of the countertop spiralizers are constructed like old-fashioned apple peelers: one end has a vertical slot to hold the blade, and the other has a pronged food holder with a crank handle. With one hand you turn the crank to feed the produce through the blade while you push a lever to exert pressure on the produce with your other hand. Every machine comes with blades to make 1/4-inch-thick noodles, 1/8-inch-thick noodles, and accordion-pleated “ribbon slices.” Some of the machines had additional blades for grating or for making even thinner noodles, which we appreciated but found inessential.

We also tested an electric model, which mechanizes the spiralizing process and thus requires no elbow grease to use. It holds the produce horizontally, similar to the manual versions.

We knew we wanted a spiralizer that could accommodate fruits and vegetables of different sizes, shapes, and densities and that would be stable and easy to set up, use, and clean. A good spiralizer should also create long, unbroken noodles and generate little waste. We spiralized zucchini, apples, beets, potatoes, and butternut squash, weighing each item before and after spiralizing to calculate how much was wasted and how much was turned into long noodles.

None of these machines worked perfectly. A few of them mashed softer apples into pulp, and most of them struggled to cut the butternut squash; for those that could produce noodles from the hard squash, we had to choke up on the turning handle to muster the requisite power. After three rounds of cutting squash, even our top model developed a stress fracture on its handle from the extra exertion. Although none of the manufacturers say to avoid winter squash, we recommend caution when attempting to spiralize hard, dense vegetables.

With the zucchini, beets, and potatoes, only one machine consistently produced long, even noodles and ribbons. The reason for its success: stability. The base of this manual machine had a low profile, keeping it relatively grounded over the suction cups that anchored it to the table and preventing it from slipping forward quite as frequently as with other models. More important, it had a large food holder that allowed us t...

Everything We Tested

Good : 3 stars out of 3.Fair : 2 stars out of 3.Poor : 1 stars out of 3.
*All products reviewed by America’s Test Kitchen are independently chosen, researched, and reviewed by our editors. We buy products for testing at retail locations and do not accept unsolicited samples for testing. We list suggested sources for recommended products as a convenience to our readers but do not endorse specific retailers. When you choose to purchase our editorial recommendations from the links we provide, we may earn an affiliate commission. Prices are subject to change.
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