Our Best Garlic Zucchini Noodles Pasta

My favorite way to cook zucchini noodles (zoodles)! See how to make our quick and easy zucchini noodles pasta recipe with garlic, tomatoes, basil, and cheese. Low-carb, keto-adaptable, and vegetarian-adaptable!

Watch the video

⭐️ Try our cold zucchini noodles salad with feta and a delicious yogurt dressing.

3 Secrets for the best zoodles (zucchini noodles)

1. Don’t peel zucchini. Peeled zucchini noodles are mushy and have no crunch.
2. Don’t salt zucchini before cooking or while it cooks in the pan. Salt draws out water from the zucchini, making it less crunchy when cooked. Since salt makes things taste good, we prefer to salt the sauce, not the zucchini.
3. Don’t overcook them. Just like regular spaghetti, cook zucchini noodles to al dente. They are ready when wilted but still have a little crunch.

We love this easy zoodles recipe with noodles made from fresh zucchini, tomatoes, garlic, basil, and parmesan. The best part? The recipe only takes 20 minutes. It’s also low on calories and carbs while having maximum flavor! Enjoy these zoodles as a light meal, or add protein like baked tofu, sautéed shrimp, or juicy chicken.

Key ingredients

Use fresh, firm zucchini for the best zucchini noodles. We love this recipe with 100% zucchini noodles (basically, spaghetti made from zucchini), but you can always combine zucchini noodles and regular spaghetti for a little more sticking power.

Fresh tomatoes are excellent in this recipe, but you can use canned. We love canned San Marzano tomatoes and the options from Muir Glen.

Garlic, basil, and red pepper flakes add flavor to our sauce. We also toss in some parmesan cheese. If you are following a vegetarian diet and don’t eat parmesan, any vegetarian cheese will work in its place. I’ve made this with fresh cheese, like feta, and crumbled goat cheese and found it delicious.

⭐️ Cornstarch is a little unusual, but it is our secret ingredient for making crave-worthy zucchini noodles. Zucchini releases a lot of water during cooking. So, you will have some liquid at the bottom of your skillet.

The cornstarch transforms that watery sauce into a silky sauce that happily sticks to your noodles. Thanks to all the garlic and tomatoes, it’s delicious but a bit thin. We use this liquid to our advantage and thicken it with a slurry made from cornstarch and water.

How to make zucchini noodles with a spiralizer

Zucchini noodles are spaghetti-like strands of zucchini. The easiest way to make zucchini noodles is to use a spiralizer. They make long, curly noodles in minutes. Here’s our five-step method for doing it:

1. Rinse the zucchini and pat them dry, and trim off the ends. Leave the peel on.
2. Secure the spiralizer to your countertop. Ours has suction cups on the feet.
3. Attach the spiralizer blade to your spiralizer (read the manual if yours came with multiple blades).
4. Place the zucchini into the spiralizer, parallel to the counter, and slide the grip onto the other end so it holds the zucchini in place.
5. Turn the handle until the zucchini has been turned into long, curly spirals. To cut them into shorter lengths, use scissors to cut them into 10-inch to 12-inch lengths, like spaghetti.

We purchased the spiralizer shown in our photos and video on Amazon for less than $30. There are a variety of brands and price points to choose from, and some food processors now come with a spiralizer attachment. In our video, we use the spiralizer from Paderno World.

How to make zucchini noodles without a spiralizer

No spiralizer, no problem! You can also use a julienne vegetable peeler. These come in at under $10 and might even be hiding in your kitchen gadget drawer right now.

Most mandoline slicers will make noodles or try using a standard vegetable peeler and make wide noodles.

Depending on where you shop, you might even find that you can buy previously spiralized zucchini. I’ve seen prepared zoodles sold in Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and even some Safeway stores.

Once you’ve got noodles, you’re ready to cook them. Or don’t, and try our zucchini noodle salad!

Can you freeze zucchini noodles?

Yes, you can freeze zucchini noodles, but the texture of frozen zoodles is different from fresh ones. They do not hold up as well in dishes like our pasta recipe below but will work nicely for soups.

To freeze zoodles, we recommend that you sprialize them, then blanch for 30 seconds in boiling water. Drain them, cool them under running water, or plunge them into an ice bath. Pat the noodles dry and spread them out onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Freeze for 2 to 3 hours or until hard, then transfer your frozen noodles to a freezer-safe bag or container. Freeze for up to 6 months.

How cook zucchini noodles without getting soggy?

To prevent soggy, watery zucchini noodles, we do two things. First, we salt the zucchini after it is cooked, not before. Salt draws water from zucchini, and since zucchini is mostly water, adding salt at the beginning of cooking makes the dish more watery. Second, we use a cornstarch slurry.

Consider this my “steering into the skid” move when making zoodles. No matter what you do, some extra liquid will always be at the bottom of your skillet. So, let’s spin it into a positive and turn it into a silky sauce. We use 1 teaspoon of cornstarch mixed with 2 teaspoons of cold water for our zucchini noodles recipe.

More veggie recipes

• Instead of using zucchini, use sweet potatoes and try our 25-Minute Sweet Potato Noodles with a creamy dairy-free avocado sauce.
• Our Roasted Veggie Tacos are packed full of spice-roasted vegetables and black beans for a bit of protein.
• This Quick and Easy Vegetable Spaghetti tastes so good, you won’t even realize it’s loaded with nutritious veggies.
• I love this Parmesan Lemon Baked Spaghetti Squash with butter cooked chicken, parmesan, and fresh lemon.
• If you have some zucchini leftover, try our Garlic Butter Sauteed Zucchini. It’s fast and delicious.