Microplane Spiral Cutter

The Microplane spiral slicer is a fun tool for cutting curly shreds of vegetables. It works like a pencil sharpener - you insert the doomed vegetable and twist.

There are two different holes; one is larger than the other, so you're not limited to smaller vegetables. The larger is ideal for zucchini.

While you twist, the inner core of the vegetable comes through the hole on the far end of the cutter, so you're never going to get full shredding of a vegetable. But for many vegetables, the core isn't shred-worthy, anyway - zucchini and cucumbers are seedy in the center, and carrots have a hard center core.

Then again, you needn't throw those cores away. You can slice them, dice them, or throw them in a soup.

Because of that center hole, you're not going to get a lot of shreds from skinny carrots, so choose fat carrots if shredding is on the agenda, and start shredding in the fat end of the carrot instead of the skinny end.

As you get down to the last few inches of the vegetable, it gets pretty difficult to keep shredding because there's nothing to hold onto. I suggest stabbing the vegetable with a sturdy two-pronged meat fork and using that to keep twisting. Or, use the rest of the vegetable for some other purpose.

Who's it for: People who want a simple way to spiral cut small amounts of vegetables

Pros: Just one piece - no extra parts to keep track of.

Cons: If you want to spiral cut a lot of vegetables often - like you're going to serve zucchini spaghetti to a crowd several times a week - you should look at more automated methods.

Wishes: I wish the smaller hole was slightly smaller, to make it more useful for thinner carrots.

Source: I received this from the manufacturer.