Impulse Buy: Veggetti Pro

Last weekend I ran into the local Bed Bath and Beyond to get a new broom for the patio, I'm not sure exactly what happened to the old one but I found it in pieces.  While walking towards the back of the store where they keep the brooms I passed a stack of Veggetti Pro spiralizers on sale for $19.99 and just had to buy one.

The concept of a spiralizer is that you rotate the food while pushing it through a fixed blade, the Veggetti Pro comes with a ribbon cut insert, a thin spiral insert and a thick spiral insert.  So far I've only used the thick spiral insert to make curly fries out of sweet potatoes and russet potatoes.  Both turned out to be surprisingly easy to cut.  The Veggetti Pro has a suction cup on the bottom to attach it to a countertop, I find that wiping the counter down with a wet paper towel makes for a much stronger seal.  You secure the food to be cut by first pushing one end onto the round metal blade located on the insert, then push up the spiked plate attached to the handle to secure it in place, then use the green handle on the side to push the food through the blades while rotating.  Both potato and sweet potato went through easily.  After cutting they were seasoned (salt/white pepper for the sweet potato and the KFC spice mix for the russets), tossed with olive oil and cooked in the Avalon Bay air fryer.  Both turned out very good.

I'm pretty happy with this cheap gadget and look forward to finding new things to spiralize.  Everything comes apart easily for cleaning, the instructions say that most parts are top-rack dishwasher safe but I find that hand cleaning isn't difficult at all.  One thing that would make it better would be to have a removable catch bowl, the cutter blade is pretty close to the counter so there isn't much room to put down anything deeper than a dinner plate.  There is also a fair amount of waste, you end up with about a 1/2" diameter core and another 1/2" cap that doesn't go through the blade inserts.