What is the best spice grinder?

It depends on the spice. A burr pepper mill for peppercorns, a heavy granite mortar for wet pastes and coarse cracking, and a cheap blade grinder for hard seeds, bark and dried chiles that would jam a mill.

Can I use a pepper mill for other spices?

Only for hard, dry, similarly sized ones. Coriander and mustard seed usually work, while cumin bridges instead of feeding through, cloves gum the burrs with their oil, and cinnamon or turmeric will break the mechanism.

Is a blade grinder bad for spices?

It is uneven rather than bad. It chops instead of grinding, so you get dust alongside fragments, and the dust scorches in a hot pan while the fragments are still raw. Pulsing, shaking and grinding small amounts fixes most of it.

Why does a mortar and pestle taste different?

It crushes and tears rather than cutting, which ruptures the oil cells differently, and it generates no friction heat. It is also the only one of these tools that handles wet ingredients such as garlic, chile and fresh herbs.

Can I use one grinder for coffee and spices?

You can, but the flavors carry over and cumin-scented coffee is hard to forget. Grinding a spoonful of rice and wiping the chamber removes most residue, though a second cheap grinder is the real answer.

Do you need to season a new stone mortar?

Yes. Grind a handful of rice to powder, discard it and repeat until the powder comes out white rather than grey. That removes the loose grit that would otherwise end up in the first few things you make.

Spice Grinders: Which Tool Gives the Flavor You Want?

The four kinds of spice grinder do different things to the same seed, and the difference is particle size rather than power. A blade chops unevenly, a burr mill crushes to a uniform grind, and a mortar tears the material open, which is why the same spice tastes different from each.

What does a spice grinder actually do?

Every grinder is solving the same problem, which is getting at the aromatic oils held inside a seed or a piece of bark.

Those oils sit in tiny cells within the plant material, and they only reach your nose once those cells are broken open. Everything else about a grinder follows from how it breaks them.

That is why the machines are not interchangeable. Cutting, crushing and abrading produce different particle sizes and different amounts of heat, and both of those change what you end up tasting.

Four ways of getting at the same oils
Type	How it works	What it produces
Blade grinder	Chops at high speed	A wide mix of dust and chunks
Burr mill	Two surfaces crush and shear	Uniform particles, adjustable
Mortar and pestle	Crushes and tears by pressure	Coarse and irregular, with bruised pieces
Grater or microplane	Abrades the surface away	Very fine, only for hard whole spices

Uniformity is the thing to notice in that table. A pile of powder made of identical particles behaves predictably in a pan, while one containing both dust and gravel does two things at once.

When is a blade grinder good enough for spices?

The small electric blade grinder is the one most kitchens end up with, and it is genuinely useful within limits.

It does not grind. It chops, at high speed, and whatever happens to be near the blade gets hit more often than what is stuck in the corner.

Three piles of ground cumin on a white surface, one uneven with both fine dust and whole seed fragments, one completely uniform and medium fine, and one coarse and irregular with bruised pieces - blade against burr against mortar | KnowTheSpices — The same spice through three machinesAll three piles came from the same jar of seed. The differences are what the machine did, not what the spice was.

The result is a mixed grind, and in a hot pan that mixture misbehaves. The dust burns while the fragments are still raw.

There is also heat. Friction warms the spice, and the aromatic compounds you were trying to release are volatile.

A long continuous run therefore drives some of them off before the powder ever reaches the dish.

Pulse in short bursts rather than running it continuously.
Shake the grinder between pulses to move the corners into the blade.
Grind small amounts, since a half-full chamber circulates better than a full one.
Stop while it still feels cool to the hand.
Sieve the result if the dish depends on an even grind.

Within those limits it is the most versatile thing you can own. Hard seeds, dried chiles, cinnamon quills and whole nutmeg all yield to it, where a pepper mill would jam and a mortar would take ten minutes.

Which spices can a burr mill grind?

A burr mill crushes between two shaped surfaces and delivers a genuinely even grind, adjustable from coarse to fine.

Almost every household already has one, in the form of a pepper mill. What most people do not have is a burr mill that will take anything else.

The mechanism is built around a hard dry corn of a particular size. Peppercorns suit it, coriander and mustard seed will usually work, and anything oily, fibrous or soft will clog it solidly.

What a pepper mill will and will not take
Spice	In a pepper mill	Why
Black and white peppercorns	Yes, it is the design case	Hard, dry, uniform in size
Coriander seed	Usually	Similar size, though it is hollow and can slip
Mustard seed	Usually	Small and hard, but it can jam a fine setting
Allspice berries	Sometimes	Slightly large for many mills
Cumin seed	No	The shape bridges rather than feeding through
Cloves	No	Oily enough to gum the burrs
Cinnamon or turmeric	No	Bark and root will break the mechanism

Ceramic burrs are worth paying for over steel in a mill you will use for salt, since salt corrodes steel and a rusted mechanism grinds badly before it fails.

The adjustment collar is the part that matters most in use, and a mill without one is a mill making somebody else's decision about your food, which is covered under grinding.

Why does a mortar and pestle produce a different result?

It is easy to read the mortar as the thing people used before electricity, and that misreads what it does.

A mortar crushes and tears rather than cutting, and that ruptures oil cells in a way a blade does not. It is why a mortar-made spice paste smells stronger than a machine-made one from the same ingredients.

It is also the only one of these that handles wet ingredients. Garlic, ginger, chile and fresh herbs pound into a paste that no dry grinder can produce.

Three mortars side by side, a heavy rough granite one, a dark volcanic stone molcajete and a ridged Japanese ceramic suribachi with a wooden pestle - three mortar designs for different jobs | KnowTheSpices — Three designs, three different surfacesThe inside surface is the whole design. Rough stone grips and tears, while the ridged ceramic is built for grinding seeds down to a paste.

Weight and roughness are what to buy on. A light polished marble mortar looks handsome and slides the ingredients around instead of gripping them.

Depth matters more than people expect. A shallow wide bowl throws peppercorns across the kitchen, and a deep one with steep sides keeps them where the pestle is.

A mortar disappoints most people because of how they use it, and the correction takes one sentence.

Pounding is only the start. Once the pieces are broken, the work is a pressing and twisting motion with the pestle held against the side of the bowl, grinding material between stone and stone.

Anyone who pounds all the way through gets a bowl of fragments and a sore arm, and concludes that the tool is slow. The twisting motion is what turns fragments into paste.

Break it firstA few firm strikes to open the seeds or split the garlic.
Then switchPress the pestle down and rotate, working against the wall of the bowl.
Add salt for gripA pinch gives the pestle something to bite on with wet ingredients.
Work in orderHard and dry first, soft and wet afterwards.
Scrape the sidesBring the escaped material back into the middle as you go.

Order of ingredients is the other half of it. Fibrous lemongrass and hard peppercorns go in before garlic and chile, because once the bowl is wet nothing dry will grind properly in it.

When should you use a grater instead of a grinder?

Grating sits apart from the other three, since it removes material from the surface of something hard rather than reducing the whole piece.

That suits exactly the spices that resist everything else. Whole nutmeg is the obvious one, and dried ginger, dried turmeric root and cinnamon quills can all be handled the same way.

A fine microplane does this well and costs little. The traditional curved nutmeg grater with a compartment in the handle is charming and works no better.

It also earns its drawer space on things that are not spices at all, since the same blade handles citrus zest, hard cheese and raw garlic.

The reason to bother is storage rather than texture. A whole nutmeg holds its aroma for years while the ground version fades within months, so the grater is really a way of buying time.

Which spice grinder should you buy first?

There are two workarounds that cost nothing, and both are better than a jar of stale powder.

A heavy pan makes a serviceable crusher. Put the spices in a folded sheet of paper or a sturdy bag, set it on a board, and lean on it with the base of the pan, rocking rather than hammering.

A rolling pin does the same job with more control, and it is the better option for cracking peppercorns coarsely for a steak.

Neither will give you a fine powder, which is worth saying plainly. They crack and bruise, so use them where a coarse grind is wanted and buy the powder for the dishes that need it.

Most kitchens do not need all four, and the order of usefulness is fairly clear.

Buying in order of what you will actually use
Buy	When	Roughly what to look for
A pepper mill with an adjustment collar	First, always	Ceramic burrs if it will ever hold salt
A heavy granite mortar	Second	Rough interior, deep bowl, a pestle you can grip
A blade grinder	Third	Cheap is fine, a second one for coffee is cheaper than regret
A microplane or nutmeg grater	Fourth	Only if you use whole nutmeg or dried ginger
An electric burr spice mill	Rarely worth it	Expensive, and a mortar covers most of the gap

The second blade grinder is the one piece of advice worth taking seriously. Coffee and spices share a machine badly, and cumin-flavored coffee is memorable in the wrong way.

If you already own one grinder and use it for both, grinding a spoonful of rice and wiping the chamber out removes most of what remains. It is a mitigation rather than a fix.

Which spice grinders should you avoid?

Some grinders are sold on features that do not survive contact with a kitchen.

A supermarket spice jar with a moulded plastic grinder in its lid beside a solid wooden pepper mill with a metal adjustment collar - a disposable grinder against one built to last | KnowTheSpices — One is a package, the other is a toolThe jar on the left grinds at one coarseness and is finished when the jar is empty. The mill on the right can be adjusted, refilled and taken apart.

Battery grinders are a preference rather than an error, though the lightweight ones tend to be built around the same plastic mechanism. Judge one by whether the burrs are ceramic and whether the grind can be adjusted.

Very large capacity is a false economy for spice. Grinding more than you will use in a fortnight puts the aroma into a storage jar rather than into a dish, and ground spice starts fading the moment it leaves the machine.

How do you clean and maintain a spice grinder?

Grinders fail in predictable ways, and almost all of it is oil and moisture.

Wipe a blade grinder out dry rather than washing it, since the motor housing and the water are close neighbours. A brush and a dry cloth deal with almost everything.

Never put a blade grinder chamber under a tap unless it detaches completely.
Empty a pepper mill before it sits unused for months, since old corns absorb moisture.
Wash a stone mortar with water and a brush, and never with soap.
Dry a mortar thoroughly, because stored damp stone develops a smell.
Grind rice through a blade grinder to lift stubborn oily residue.

A new stone mortar needs seasoning before its first real use. Grind a handful of rice to a grey powder, discard it, and repeat until the powder comes out white, which removes the loose grit that would otherwise end up in your food.

Doing that once is the difference between a mortar that lasts a lifetime and one that makes your first three curries taste faintly of the quarry.