Here are the exact and specific saladacco instructions

Written by Nomi Shannon, The Raw Gourmet www.rawgourmet.com

The instructions that come with the product are confusing, misleading and in part incorrect; it is not recommended that you use them.

Used correctly what you will wind up with is long strands, about as thick as angel-hair pasta or what ever veggie you are using. Just add your favorite sauce, like a raw marinara tho the variations are endless and you have a truly wonderful meal and so simple!!!!

There are two blades, a flat one that is screwed in, and one that is a set of
"teeth" that is connected to a "gear" on the side of the white middle section. The "teeth" can be moved UP to make pasta, or DOWN to make curly slices by moving the gear. Be sure that the teeth are ALL THE WAY UP for making pasta. Also it is important to check from time to time to be sure that your hand or finger hasn't accidentally moved the gear while you are using the saladacco, this is common and results in slices rather than pasta.

Your vegetable, let's say it is a zucchini (courgette) must be fairly straight. Be sure to choose straight rather than crooked ones at the store. Also VERY IMPORTANT when you cut the vegetable it needs to be cut straight not at an angle. The vegetable is placed in the saladacco upright, that is vertical, not horizontal. You can not lay your vegetable down on its side and get good results. So if it is a zucchini, you are placing one of the cut ends centered directly on to the raised point in the center of the middle white piece. Your vegetable must be three inches high or less to fit.

Once you have centered the vegetable on the raised white dot, simply put the clear cover on and allow the white disc to just lower by itself, nothing special should be done here, just put the clear cover on. Then turn the clear cover gently either left or right it doesn't matter, til it STOPS. WARNING: NEVER "LOCK" THE TOP ON. This will break the machine and it will not perform correctly if you "lock" it.

If you are right handed hold the clear top with your left so that the saladacco will stay in place. With your right hand, you will be turning the handle clockwise. IMPORTANT: WHILE YOU ARE TURNING THE HANDLE YOU ALSO NEED TO PRESS DOWNWARD WITH THE HAND THAT IS TURNING THE HANDLE. This may not seem like a natural thing to do, but this is what you need to do for the saladacco to perform properly. With a zucchini, you will be pressing down fairly firmly but not very firmly, pressing down enables the vegetable to engage with the teeth.

When you are using a harder vegetable like a beet or carrot or sweet potato, you need to apply much more pressure than you do with the zucchini.

This sounds far more complicated than it really is because I have broken each tiny step down. Practice with a potato or a zucchini before using it on the very hard vegetables. Some vegetables such as parsnip actually can be too old and dry to work well in a saladacco. A fresh parsnip works well, but sometimes late in the season the old woody ones don't work well. Likewise a very large zucchini with a huge soft center filled with seeds won't work well either as the soft center won't turn into pasta it will just turn into mush.

Now that you know how to use this wonderfully useful gadget…Knock yourself out: try it with carrot, beet, sweet potato, parsnip, turnip, rutabaga, celery root (celeriac), or my personal favorite the zucchini (courgette). The saladacco does not work for soft items like tomatoes or most apples, it will work with firm daikon radish, but not with most jicama, it is too watery. Some people claim they use it for onion, I have never quite figured out how that would work out-not for pasta like strips anyway.