The Death of the Spiralizer–Or Maybe It’s Just Sleeping

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Electric spiralizer, resting on a tray of vegetables.  Photo by Cecilia Kennedy

When a particularly thick and stubborn potato blew out the motor of my electric spiralizer, I pressed every button on the device, hoping to startle it into submission because obviously, it was just confused. One potato could not possibly defeat a finely crafted hand-held appliance that turns ugly vegetables, like zucchini and turnips, into glorious spirals. But when the motor still refused to budge, even after I pressed more buttons, while simultaneously smashing down hard on the potato, I reached a dark place. The kitchen turned into a desert, and only the occasional, un-exciting head of cabbage rolled by and vomited a parsnip.

“Who will eat vegetables that don’t look fun and noodle-like? Who?” I shouted.

Soon, Nate came home, only to find me knee deep in potato peels, with zucchini noodles dripping from boiling pots. He surveyed the kitchen as if everything looked normal and I decided it was my job to show him that he couldn’t be more wrong.

“Look—look at this spiralizer,” I said, waving the device around. “When I press the button—there is no whirring sound—you know? The sound of a motor that’s working? It’s dead! The spiralizer is dead!”

I was really hoping to whip him into a frenzy, but he just calmly grabbed a snack and sat down, thoughtfully.

“Nah. It’s just tired,” he said. “Let it rest.”

I took a deep breath and reasoned that maybe the potato I was trying to spiralize was just too large, so perhaps a rest was in order. The owner’s manual said I could cut up vegetables and then spiralize them, which I was doing, but it didn’t say anything about buying unnaturally large vegetables and trying to force them into the device. I was probably just guilty of buying vegetables so big that even kitchen appliances would stand back and say, “Whoa! That is just NOT happening.” So, I gently placed the spiralizer on the counter and watched it “rest.” I lasted five minutes.

“Nope. I can’t wait. I can’t wait any longer,” I said.

“We could just chop up the vegetables,” he suggested.

But they were chopped already—chopped and ready to be fed into the spiralizer. And, as he could clearly see, the chopped versions of the vegetables were not nearly as impressive as the flowing, colorful, noodle shapes. In fact, the idea that he would suggest that I chop the vegetables, just proved that blatantly chopped vegetables—right in plain view—go by unnoticed.

My response to his suggestion then, was to grab the spiralizer, shake it and say, “You’ve had enough rest! Wake up!”“I have an idea,” Nate said as he stepped in to inspect the spiralizer. I thought he was going to fix it, but instead, he detached the blade and pressed the potato onto the blade, working it with his hands. After several agonizing minutes, a spiral started to appear.

“See? We can do this by hand,” he said.

“What? Like animals? Can’t we just take the thing apart and use another motor?”

That’s when Nate suddenly looked more excited about kitchen appliances than I’d ever seen him look in our nearly 20 years of marriage. He began to brainstorm all kinds of ideas, including this one: We could attach a blade to the power dill and then the job would get done even faster.

“Well hurry, then—get the drill! Get the drill!” I shouted.

“In theory,” he continued, “There’s no difference between a Tesla, a power drill, and a spiralizer when it comes down to it.”

“Wait. . . . you mean we could use a car motor to spiralize vegetables?”

“Yep—way more torque too.”

I began to realize that my problem was not a lack of equipment for spiralizing vegetables, but rather, a lack of a supply of vegetables. I decided I’d need more than a few zucchini and an extra large sweet potato, so I made a to-list while Nate started to take apart the spiralizer. My to-do list included the following tasks:

1) Find the power drill and/or a Tesla

2) Buy more vegetables.

And then, I heard a lovely sound—a whirring, high-pitched sound—and I knew that my spiralizer was working again.

“Yeah—it needed to rest. It’s working just fine now,” Nate said.

But I suddenly felt a little disappointed. I was looking forward to the day when I could finally drive a Tesla down the freeway, while it spewed a colorful trail of veggie spirals.

Your Turn: What is your broken appliance story? Did you replace it, fix it, or do without? Discuss.

Published by ckennedy

Author of the DIY blog: Fixin' Leaks and Leeks. Paper/Rock Writing Consultation, Sole Proprietor.

42 thoughts on “The Death of the Spiralizer–Or Maybe It’s Just Sleeping”

  2. It’s true. Sometimes our electrical appliances just stop and have a kip and after a suitable period they wake up and work again.

    I have some awkward visions though of you and large vegetables and kitchen appliances…Hooking up the blades to the engine of an electric vehicle though would solve a lot of problems. Being old fashioned, I’d prefer a Mopar Hemi V8 to power my blades.

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      1. While I’m told the torque of an electric vehicles electric motor will always be superior, there’s no electric motor that sounds as good as a V8 internal combustion engine 😂🤣

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  4. Elon Musk has already tweeted “D***n the SEC, I must speak!”
    and then “Solar-Powered SpaceX Hyperloop Tesla Boring SPIRALIZER!!!
    “THAT’S THE MISSING LINK !!!! We can sell a Cosmic Spiralizer for $35k I tell you!!”
    10 seconds later:
    “You spin me right round, baby, right round (like a record) it’s all about SPIRALIZING!”
    “It was spiraling out of control, but it’s all making sense now!!!”
    I didn’t read the rest, trying to find my power drill, this is a great time-saving post! Thanks!

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  6. Thanks for sharing! 😄 I thoroughly enjoyed this post, Cecliia! I could relate in a way, since I recently bought a spiralizer and had such great visions of all the wonderful zoodles I could make. My first attempt was such a messy disaster that I immediately washed it up, repackaged it and asked my children who wanted to try it next. My youngest son took the challenge. He has such a spirit of adventure!

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    1. Glad you enjoyed the post! The spiralizer I bought works really, really well on zucchini and the sweet potato wasn’t bad. Some things are a bit hit or miss, but overall, I’m pretty happy with it–though there are other appliances I’ve had to pack up and give to someone else–as you explain here. For me, it was the food processor.

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  11. Haha! You know, you could convert that Tesla to run on vegetable oil and then your exhaust would be spiral fries, fully cooked! Not quite as pretty as all of the colorful vegetables, but hey…FRIES! Need I say more?

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  16. I bought a spiralizer, but I didn’t use it yet. Time to begin. My home appliances are so usefurl I can’t go without, if possible I fix, if not I replace

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  17. Such a funny story! We have an electric and a hand spiralizer, but we tend to use the hand one more. The only thing is that the vegetables get smaller and smaller as you manually feed them through, and you have to really be careful of your fingers and watch for signs of red-streaked spiralized veggies as they come out the other end. Maybe we should use the electric one more often? Just make sure you ask before coming to our house for a meal to make sure we are not spiralizing anything!

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  18. Pingback: How (Not) to Fix a Broken Beard Trimmer | Tales from the Land Manatee

  19. I was thinking on how to write up my own malfunctioning device when I read your post and it gave me a perfect springboard. to tell my story. Hope you don’t mind, but you (and Nate!) get a brief mention.

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    1. No problem! I love it! I saw it and ran to Nate this morning while he was getting ready and read it out loud to him. We had a good chuckle. Over the years, people have made comments that they really like Nate–I’m glad–he’s wonderful!!! Cheers!

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  20. I never thought someone’s broken appliance story could be so funny. My only one was pretty boring – my blender broke while I was trying to make a shake. No, I did not grab the cup, close it and shook it vigorously myself until I had something similar to a shake, why do you ask? XD

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