When the great spiralizer craze took over the culinary world, I didn’t jump right on the bandwagon. Instead, I wanted to wait until the craze was safely in my rearview mirror. Apparently, I wanted to wait for thousands and thousands of miles, because that trend actually peaked over twelve years ago, back around 2014, and I just picked up my first spiralizer in 2026! But hey, life is like that on The Renaissance Road. One time we jump right into the latest craze, and the next, we wait until the world has largely forgotten about it!
Even though I finally decided to give it a go, I still didn’t want to buy some big honking piece of equipment to clutter up my cabinets or countertops. After a little research, I settled on a small handheld model by OXO. It came with three blades ranging in size from thin noodles, to medium, to ribbon cut. When not in use, all three blades lock together right onto the unit for easy and compact storage.
When it was time to finally give it a try, I went to my refrigerator to see what we had on hand. I know at the heart of the craze, it was all about the zucchini noodles, or zoodles. The only problem with making them was that we had no zucchini on hand! I didn’t want to give up on the project immediately and risk having the spiralizer find its way to the back of some cabinet for another 12 years, so I went with the next best option – yellow squash! If I couldn’t make zoodles, then I would make squoodles! Was that ever even a thing?
I set up the handheld gadget with the medium blade, pushed the squash into the unit, and started twisting. I wasn’t sure what the outcome would be, but hoped the medium-sized blade would be the right choice to try first. I was happy to find that the squash came out in nice spirals instead of the mush that I thought might appear on the other side of the blade!
I kept the cooking process simple for my first spiralizing adventure by sautéing the squoodles in a hot pan with a touch of olive oil. Pan-sautéed squash cooks pretty quickly in general, and the squoodles were done in about 4 minutes. I finished them off with a simple, savory seasoning combination of salt, pepper, butter, and ground sage.
The verdict? Overall I was pretty happy with my first attempt at spiralizing. The butter and sage paired beautifully with the natural, slight sweetness of the yellow squash, creating a dish that felt a bit elevated, but took only a few minutes to throw together.
It was a fun experience, and I think it’s safe to say that the little OXO handheld has officially earned a spot in the kitchen gadget rotation.
The Renaissance Road 