If you want to cut back on carbs, pack in your five-a-day and occasionally swap pasta, potato and noodles for ribbons of fruit or vegetables, then spiralizing is for you.

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The range of spiralizing products available is surprisingly wide, with choices ranging from expensive countertop machines to vegetable peeler-style ribbon makers.

Hand-held spiralizers require a little elbow grease but win on the price and storage front. Heavy-duty stand spiralizers are easier and quicker to use, and while imported versions from the gadget’s birthplace – Japan – can cost a pretty penny, there are now several European spiralizers on the UK market and they tend to carry more budget-friendly price tags.

We tested spiralizers using courgette to make the ubiquitous spiralized dish 'courgetti'. We also pushed the gadgets a little further by testing how they handled harder veg like carrots, potatoes and butternut squash.

Find out more about which ingredients can be turned into ribbons by reading our guide to how to get the best results from spiralizing.

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Best spiralizers at a glance

  • Best overall spiralizer: ProCook spiralizer, £15
  • Best compact spiralizer: Joseph Joseph Spiro spiralizer, £18
  • Best budget spiralizer: Habitat spiralizer, £15
  • Best for courgetti: OXO Good Grips spiralize, grate and slice set, £32
  • Best electric spiralizer attachment: Magimix Spiral Expert Kit, £119
  • Best retro spiralizer: Chiba Kaiten Japanese spiralizer, £79.95
  • Best spiralizer attachment: KitchenAid spiralizer, £83.95

Best spiralizers to buy in 2024

ProCook spiralizer

ProCook spiralizer

Best overall spiralizer

Pros:

  • Secure on the worktop
  • Versatile design
  • Fully recyclable packaging

Cons:

  • Only two blades

Star rating: 4.5/5

We found very little to fault with this manual ProCook spiralizer. Reliable and practical, it has a hardy yet lightweight design and small footprint, and it felt stable on the worktop during use.

The spiralizer secures the vegetable at both ends, so you don't need to hold it as you operate the turn handle. Just bear in mind it doesn't come with a collection pot, so you'll want to place a bowl or chopping board underneath it.

All our vegetables stayed completely intact, giving us long spaghetti strands with no mush or breakage and little to no waste at the end. We could also recycle all the packaging it arrived in – a real win in terms of sustainability.

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Joseph Joseph Spiro spiralizer

Joseph Joseph spiro spiralizer

Best compact spiralizer

Pros:

  • Small footprint
  • Easy to store
  • Attractive
  • Clear instruction manual

Cons:

  • Struggled with longer, thinner veg
  • Some plastic packaging

Star rating: 4.5/5

This manual spiralizer is a great piece of kit for smaller kitchens – it's compact and easy to store, and comes with a handful of accessories. As we've come to expect from Joseph Joseph, it's also brightly coloured and has smooth, rounded edges, and the materials are of a good quality.

It comes with a fine and a coarse spiralizer blade, plus a rotary grating blade. Once you've secured the veg into place, simply twist the soft-grip handle to work the mechanism – the spiralized veg then drops into the container below, keeping mess to a minimum.

Our potatoes, cucumber and courgette spiralized well, but some broke apart and our spaghetti strands were a tad short. With carrots there was a lot more breakage, producing little curls without much shape. We'd advise using shorter, chunkier carrots to get better results.

Habitat spiralizer

Habitat spiralizer

Best budget spiralizer

Pros:

  • Four cutting blades included
  • Produced long strands of veg
  • Intuitive design
  • Secure on the worktop

Cons:

  • Makes a bit of mess
  • Some non-recyclable packaging
  • Didn't work well with carrots and courgette

Star rating: 4.5/5

If it's versatility you want, this budget-friendly tool comes with five cutting blades for creating different shapes. We found it straightforward to operate, and the suction on the base keeps it secure on the worktop, too – simply pull the lever in the centre to lock it down.

The manual is detailed but doesn't make it clear which blades produce which shape. In testing, the handle rotated smoothly with little resistance, and we liked that there was a safety guard to protect our hands during use.

Our potatoes and cucumber transformed into impressively long ribbons, staying fully intact with no breakage. However, our courgettes became soft and lacked any shape, and our carrots turned into uneven curls rather than long strands. Some vegetables also produced a lot of liquid, which then ran onto the table and created some mess. On the plus side, we found the ingredients that spiralized well left little waste behind.

OXO Good Grips spiralize, grate and slice set

OXO Good Grips 3-in-1 spiralizer, grater and slicer set

Best for courgetti

Pros:

  • Compact design
  • Includes four blades
  • Produced long strands of courgetti

Cons:

  • Worked less well on carrot
  • Created more waste than other models
  • Excessive non-recyclable packaging

Star rating: 4/5

Multi-functionality is a big win when it comes to kitchen equipment, and this versatile food prep tool has blades for spiralizing, slicing and grating ingredients. All the components fit together neatly inside the storage box.

It works using a hand-twist mechanism, and the vegetables move through the blades downwards before dropping into the box below. The capacity of the container does limit how much you can spiralize at once.

We found it slower and more strenuous to use compared to a crank handle spiralizer, but the vegetables moved across the blades smoothly and there's a blade guard included for safety.

We achieved the best results when spiralizing courgette and potato – our strands were lengthy, thin and stayed intact throughout. Carrots were more grated than spiralized, and sadly broke apart with every half turn. The centre of the cucumber also went mushy, but the strands themselves were long with no breakage.

Magimix Spiral Expert kit

Magimix Spiral Expert Kit

Best electric spiralizer attachment

Pros:

  • Easy to clean
  • Three different sizes
  • Premium design

Cons:

  • Expensive
  • Large footprint
  • Vegetables need to be held against the blade

Star rating: 4/5

Compatible with a range of Magimix food processors (4200Xl, 5200XL and new models of the 3200XL), this spiralizing attachment does the heavy lifting for you – simply attach it to the top of your food processor and feed the ingredients through as you would with a juicer.

The kit comes with three spiralizing options – fusilli, spaghetti and tagliatelle – and we were impressed by the premium design. There are also helpful diagrams in the manual, which we relied on heavily during the set-up process.

Some veg, like courgette, spiralized into long ribbons smoothly, while others, like carrot, cucumber and potato, broke apart more easily. This – we realised – happened when the vegetable wasn't flush against the blade, as it formed smaller chunks rather than the long strings we wanted. To avoid this, the veg needs to be in constant contact with the blade.

Chiba Kaiten Japanese spiralizer

Chiba Kaiten Japanese spiralizer

Best retro spiralizer

Pros:

  • Sharp blades
  • Attractive design

Cons:

  • Doesn't feel secure on worktop

Star rating: 3.5/5

Hailing from Japan (aka the birthplace of spiralizers), this gadget comes with three sharp blades made from Japanese steel, which were sharp enough to slice through all our vegetables – even the tougher ones.

It's easy on the eye, sporting an attractive lime colour and retro feel. It has some heft to it, though only two of the feet have grips, so it moved around on the countertop more than we'd like.

A cleaning brush is included, which we made good use of as some parts of the spiralizer were tricky to reach. It's worth hanging onto the box, too, as you can use it to store the blades.

The spiralizer did a particularly good job with courgettes and carrots, producing distinct long noodles that fed through seamlessly. With cucumber, we were able to create very fine vermicelli-shaped strands, though our potato – while mostly intact – became a bit mushy towards the end.

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KitchenAid spiralizer

spiralizer-resized_0-0df42ed

Best spiralizer attachment

This spiralizer is an attachment for a KitchenAid stand mixer that secures to the front of the machine. Ideal for those dedicated to spiralizing, this attachment has two blades for noodles and two for ribbon slices.

A spiked pad holds the veg securely and with the slide of a switch the mixer’s motor drives the blade towards the veg for effortless spiralizing. Though it stumbled occasionally with softer pieces of butternut squash, we were really impressed by how consistently well this machine coped with a variety of veg.

Solid and stylish, the body of the machine is handwash only, but blades can be washed on the top rack of the dishwasher. The attachment and blades come in a solid cardboard box that does require some storage space but we think worth it if you spiralize regularly.

How we tested spiralizers

Spiralized salad

We reviewed a representative sample of electric and hand-held spiralizers and scored them against the following criteria.

Ease of use: In the case of stand and hand-held spiralizers, we wanted to be able to attach our fruit and vegetables easily, then use a simple lever or twist motion to speedily create ribbons without having to exert too much force.

Resilience: As we were looking to shred and spiralize harder vegetables, it was important the gadgets were strong and durable – a wobbly handle or flimsy blade won’t cut the mustard when it comes to creating sweet potato or celeriac matchsticks.

Ease of cleaning: We looked for stand spiralizers with removable components that can be washed in a dishwasher or with an old-fashioned manual scrub.

Ease of storage: While flat mandolines and pint-sized peelers will always have the edge when it comes to the size factor, we looked for compact stand and hand-held spiralizers than can be tucked away neatly.

Features: Any added bonuses, like different shaped blades to allow for various ribbon thicknesses, were taken into account – ideally a spiralizer can create thin spirals, slices and spaghetti shapes and has attachments that are easy to affix, remove and store.

How we tested: Simple hand-held spiralizers were tested with courgettes and carrots – safety, waste and quality of spiral were all noted. More expensive multi-blade spiralizers were put through their paces with a range of vegetables – from easy-to-cut courgettes to awkwardly shaped beetroot and notoriously tough butternut squash. We looked for consistency in spiral, ease of use and quality of build to judge whether their price and footprint were justified. For more product picks, visit our reviews section.

Spiralizer recipes

Courgetti bolognese
Veggie meatballs with tomato courgetti
Summer courgetti & meatballs
Spiralized Singapore noodles
Bang bang chicken & spiralized noodles
Spiralizer recipes
10 new ways to use your spiralizer

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This guide was last updated in January 2024. If you have any questions, suggestions for future reviews or spot anything that has changed in price or availability please get in touch at goodfoodwebsite@immediate.co.uk.

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