Reviewing the Veggetti

Introducing the new food revolution

What wouldn’t you give to eat a giant plate of pasta for only 60 calories? I’d probably give about $20.  And I did.

Today I’m taking a look at the Veggetti, the “fast easy way to make mouth-watering zucchini and squash pasta in seconds!”

Commercial Claim

According to the commercial this spiffin’ new kitchen contraption can make a giant bowl of “mouthwatering” pasta for just 60 calories.  It also claims you can “just place any zucchini into the Veggetti and turn.  In just seconds you’ve got mounds of zucchini pasta with a delicious taste and perfect texture.”

The test to beat

To find out if the Veggetti is all it’s cracked up to be, I’m going to be putting it through its paces.  So, I’m going to do exactly what the commercial said I should do! 

I will stick a zucchini in the contraption and twist.  Then I can tell you how well the device makes “mounds” of pasta, how easy clean up is afterwards, and whether or not the taste of veggie pasta isn’t bad enough to deter me from healthy pasta.

How it works
If you watch the commerical you get a pretty good idea of everything the Veggetti can do. It's basically two cones stuck together to form an hourglass like shape. Inside each cone is a set of blade. One end has thick cutting abilities and the other thin.

It works by putting a zucchini or other firm vegetable into one of the openings and twisting the vegetable. The blade cuts the vegetable into strips and it comes out on the outside, which is why you twist the vegetable and not the contraption.

How Veggetti measures up

I was pretty excited about this.  Who wouldn’t be excited to eat pasta constantly for 60 calories? (I looked it up, this number is actually accurate. A large zucchini has 57 calories according to Google. So that’s exciting.)

I may have thought the cucumber on the far right was a zucchini when I started this test. I assure, it doesn't work the same at all.

My excitement lead me to going out and purchasing fresh zucchini from the farmer’s market here in Menomonie.  They’re pretty skinny little buggers, nothing like the whoppers that always come out of my mom’s garden. 

Then the next day I met up with my mother and she brought me some of those whoppers.  So I now have a variety of zucchini to test with.

I started with one of the giant ones.  Turns out that was a mistake.  It worked for a little bit, the zucchini came out in perfect ribbons (except for the middle, which becomes a weird little thing that looks like a rotini noodle and comes out in the other cone of the Veggetti.)

 But once it got to the thickest part of the zucchini it no longer twisted. Turns out, if a vegetable is larger than the opening of the Veggetti, it won’t go in.  Huh, who woulda thunk it?!

I tried several different things to get it to still noodle my vegetables, but ultimately it was a pain in the butt, so I gave up.

Observe the lovely strips of zucchini. The right picture is the difference between the thick and thin settings.

I moved on to the smaller sized zucchini. It. Worked. So. Great.  I can’t even begin to explain how fun it was to watch ribbons of zucchini come out of the Veggetti and just pile up on my plate. I took one strip out of the pile and it was taller than me! And it only took about 6 minutes!

The down sides of the Veggetti.

There will be a bit of left over zucchini at the end that you can’t ribbonify.  You won’t want to get your fingers anywhere near those blades so I suggest stopping your process with about an inch of zucchini still sticking out.  The device comes with a small plastic piece that is supposed to grip the veggie so you can keep twisting without your phalanges being in trouble, but it’s crap.  Doesn’t work at all.

To summarize, it works great, so long as the zucchini is the right size and you don’t mind eating a little zucchini stub when you’re done.

Clean up was a little difficult because the tiny little blades are sharp and hard to get in-between.  Bits of zucchini get stuck in-between the plastic and the blades, but you can’t get too close to them or you’ll slice your finger open.  So be careful.

Now for the taste test.

Okay here’s the deal.  The fun texture of the zucchini pasta that the commercial talks about only lasts if you keep the noodles cold.  WHO WANTS COLD SPAGHETTI? No one wants that crap.

So you have to heat up the noodles somehow (microwaving is the easiest). This gives the noodles a limp watery texture.  It’s not awful, but uhhh, nothing like pasta.

And then there is the taste; it’s a zucchini.  It tastes like a zucchini.  Because that’s what it is.  Weird, I know.

Here's some zucchini pasta. I will say that it is a much quicker prep time than pasta. No waiting for noodles to cook. Just pop zucchini noodles, sweet peppers and some pesto into a frying pan and you've got an awesome lunch.

So I would probably not eat this as a real substitute for pasta because it would give whatever I’m eating it with a distinctly zucchini taste, however, I really like the zucchini noodles for other things.

The noodles work great as a cold salad base, opposed to lettuce or spinach.  It’s just something more fun.  Also I was harping on the heated up version of the noodles, but if you’re not expecting noodley goodness, they’re really fine. They just aren’t pasta.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• -       fast and easy
• -       makes lots of noodles, very fast
• -       relatively small size makes it easy to store
• -       makes some great salad

Cons

• -       the vegetable used has to be a certain size (which seems to be a little smaller than average)
• -       Dangerous (don’t put your fingers in there)
• -       Tricky to clean
• -       Doesn’t magically transform vegetables into low calorie pasta

My Final verdict

I would give this product a ‘buy it’ recommendation, only if you are a fan of vegetables.  If you don’t like eating your greens, this contraption isn’t going to magically make you love them.  But, if you could eat veggies morning, noon and night, then I would say buy this bad boy.  It’s fun, fast, and relatively easy.  It certainly beats cutting zucchini strips with a knife.

How to get your hands on a Veggetti

I bought mine in the as-seen-on-tv aisle at Wally World for $15, give or take some change.  But, if you want an extra Veggetti and a super slicer (it's a weird rolling knife thing...), you only have to pay $19.99 (plus shipping and handling).

Buy Veggetti online!