Chef David Kamen shows you how to make veggies more interesting with this tool

Key takeaways

• A vegetable peeler can turn carrots into ribbon-like noodle alternatives.
• Smaller zucchini with fewer seeds creates more uniform vegetable strips.
• Broccoli stems can be peeled, sliced or grated instead of discarded.

Summary

Vegetable peeler techniques can make everyday produce more appealing while helping reduce food waste. Chef David Kamen demonstrates how to use a peeler to create carrot noodles, zucchini ribbons and broccoli “pasta” from parts of vegetables that are often overlooked.

He also shares practical tips, including saving vegetable trimmings for stock, keeping zucchini skins for added nutrients and choosing younger zucchini with fewer seeds. The result is a variety of simple ways to add more vegetables, fiber, vitamins and minerals to everyday meals.

The key takeaways and summary were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.

Full transcript

[0:00:00] Getting more vegetables in your diet is a great way to

[0:00:02] have more vitamins, more fiber.

[0:00:04] One of the great things we can do is use a vegetable peeler to get

[0:00:08] more interest in our vegetables.

[0:00:10] I really like this, uh, this vertical peeler.

[0:00:12] It’s got a little swivel.

[0:00:14] And the first thing we’re gonna do is we’re gonna make some carrot noodles.

[0:00:16] Hold it by the end, take our vegetable peeler, and make nice long

[0:00:20] strokes all the way down the carrot just to get underneath the skins.

[0:00:27] You should always keep all of your vegetable trimmings.

[0:00:30] You can make a nice little stock with those.

[0:00:32] And now what we can do is we can make nice long ribbons, and you can see

[0:00:36] they come out looking like little fettuccines or little pappardelles.

[0:00:40] And you can blanch them, and you can add them to your favorite bolognese sauce.

[0:00:45] These are great in salads as well.

[0:00:47] We can do the same thing with a zucchini.

[0:00:49] You’ve all heard about zoodles, and there’s all kinds of special appliances

[0:00:53] that you can use to make those zucchini noodles, but we can do it today just

[0:00:57] with the upright or harp-style peeler.

[0:01:00] We’re just gonna go right down the vegetable like that, and we’re

[0:01:03] gonna make these nice wide slices.

[0:01:05] In this case, we want the green skin on there.

[0:01:07] It’s edible.

[0:01:08] It’s got a lot of vitamins and minerals inside there.

[0:01:11] But what we wanna be careful of is we wanna stop right here, right

[0:01:14] when we start to see the seeds.

[0:01:15] They’re edible, but the seeds are not gonna do good things

[0:01:17] for, uh, for your digestion.

[0:01:20] When you’re choosing a zucchini for this, try to get the younger ones,

[0:01:24] ones that are a little bit smaller.

[0:01:25] They’re gonna have less seeds on the inside, and they’re gonna give you a

[0:01:29] nicer flavor and also a more uniform cut.

[0:01:33] We all know that broccoli is a great vegetable.

[0:01:36] But today, it’s not about the florets.

[0:01:38] A lot of people don’t realize that the stem is quite rather edible as well.

[0:01:44] Continue to trim it a little bit, and then we’re gonna go back to our peeler,

[0:01:51] get all that, all that tough skin off.