How To: Cook Perfect Zucchini Noodles

I am a perfectionist. Especially when it comes to cooking. It’s kind of “my thing”, and therefore I should be good at it. And not just good, but excellent. I’m always aiming for perfect, and always realizing I cannot ever achieve it.

Zucchini noodles are wonderful in a lot of ways, tasty, healthy, quick, and simple substitute for pasta, but they very quickly turn into a mushy, watery mess (AKA – not perfect). If you’ve cooked with zucchini noodles before I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Once the zucchinis let out all their water any sauce on the noodles thins and then you are left with a pool of watered down sauce on your plate.

I’d rather eat my sauce, thank you very much!

So, I put my knowledge of zucchini, cooking skills, and desire to make the perfect dinner to use and figured out a way to eat zucchini noodles without all of the extra water. The steps are simple and in the end you’ll have a perfect zucchini noodles.

Maybe humans can’t be perfect, but zucchini noodles can be!

The key to making these zucchini noodles perfect is to get the water out of the noodles before you get the noodles on your plate.

First, you need to make your zucchini noodles. There are lots of options for how to do this, and tons of tutorials on the web. I tested a few different vegetable noodle making devices and eventually settled on a Spiralizer I found on amazon.com with a lifetime guarantee.

Step two couldn’t be easier, just dump all of your spiraled zucchini into a strainer in the sink. Shake some salt over the noodles; this seems to help with releasing water. Let the noodles sit for a while (I’ve found 15 – 30 minutes to be ideal). While the recently cut and salted zucchini sits in the strainer it begins to release of the water the zucchini has been holding.

The final step is to squeeze out the liquid. I have a thin, cheap towel I use for this, but a cheesecloth would also work great. I put a handful of the zucchini noodles in the towel and wring out the liquid.

Surprisingly, this doesn’t destroy the noodles. When you unwrap the towel you’ll find whole, intact – but much drier – noodles. Since you just put pressure on the noodles when wringing them out, the noodles will be very compacted in the towel. It looks a bit deceiving at first, like they’ve been all smashed into a ball, but you should still have those perfect spaghetti stands. These will separate when you cook the noodles.

Cook these noodles however you’d like. They will stand up to being cooked in everything from a bit of olive oil with salt and pepper to a heavy sauce (like this one I posted on Wednesday). No oily, saucy, watery puddles will be left on your plate!

Zucchini Noodles with a Bolognese Sauce

Zucchini Noodles and Chicken in an Avocado Cream Sauce

Happy Vegetable Noodle Eating!