We eat a ton of meat. We love steak and barbeque and chicken and a good Sunday roast. Look at our Instagram feed: there’s no shortage of meat in our diet. But, we’re omnivores, not carnivores.

A couple of years ago, we bought a spiralizer attachment for our KitchenAid mixer. The purchase happened during a Whole30 experiment. We were moody and tired and missed noodles desperately. So, we threw a Hail Mary and clicked, “Buy”.

Have you heard of zoodles? They are spiral-cut zucchini used as a substitute for noodles. How are they? They are not noodles. We tried several methods of cooking them, but they turned out soggy and rather unappetizing and, well, not a worthy comparison for the magnificence of noodles.

We might have been overthinking it, though. Uncooked zoodles are tasty, crunchy, interesting, and fun. Our favorite way to have them is raw mixed with fresh pesto. How much pesto? That’s a you-decision, but two heaping teaspoons per zucchini serves as our rule of thumb.

On this random weekday evening, we made these pesto zoodles which we topped with blistered grape tomatoes and sautéed shrimp.

Pesto zoodles with blistered grape tomatoes and sautéed shrimp

Ingredients

• 2 zucchini
• 4 teaspoons of basil pesto. (Here’s our scratch recipe.)
• One cup of grape tomatoes
• 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil
• 1/2 tablespoon of butter
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 8-10 shrimp (We used Argentine red shrimp)
• 1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes
• salt and pepper, to taste

Directions

Spiralize zucchini. Put zoodles on a cutting board and make several crosscuts. Toss zoodles in pesto.

Place a lightly oiled skillet over medium heat. Add in cherry tomatoes. Cook until the tomatoes are almost bursting. Remove tomatoes onto a separate plate and, set aside.

Season shrimp with salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Add butter to skillet, then shrimp. Cook shrimp on one side for two minutes. Flip shrimp. Add garlic. Cook for another minute. Stir in tomatoes, cooking until shrimp is done.

Serve over penne with pesto. Top with grated Pecorino Romano cheese.