I used to have two, the Thai one (also broke the pestle) and a smaller ceramic one.
I think I might still have the Thai one, but it’s hidden away. The smaller one I use for whole cumin and anise. I accdentally bought ground cumin, so i haven’t been using it so often, and I only use it for anise for Christmas cookies.
Why did I buy ground cumin? I was so surprise to find it at the store I forgot to check. It seems that cumin is not as common here in Switzerland. At least not in my corner.
There are videos of a British chef (his name is not coming to mind) using a mortar and pestle, and the mortar was about the size of dinner plate and even the pestle was a good 2-3" across. If I had space for such a thing, I would buy it.
And I did a search for a big-ass mortar and pestle and found the chef’s name. Nigel Slater (includes a picture of the mortar and pestle, not the chef ).
My mother owns a mortar (bright yellow with some depictions of vague green leaves) and pestle (wood), but I’ve never used her much less seen her do it. It sits on top of her kitchen cabinets. In Spanish, the words are mortero and mano de mortero, mortar’s hand: I’ve seen some where the hand is shaped like a fist.
I’ve used ceramic mortar and pestle sets in the lab, but only once or twice and never once I started getting paid to be in the lab.
I have a nice stone mortar and pestle from Indonesia - while I don’t use it often these days, it’s great to have when I need it.
A tip I read years ago and always follow: if you need to grind some spices, add the salt you plan to use and grind the spices and the salt together. It helps turn the whole spices into a nice, uniform powder.
Slight hijack: I have a cat that hates taking pills, have tried putting them in pill pockets or grinding them up and putting them in liver, with minimal success. It sounds like the condensed milk method works for your cat?
I have a ridiculously tiny one that I use to grind garlic and salt into a paste for my famous herb butter that I make for a Spaghetti Dinner fundraiser once a year. I’ve used it to grind other spices as well, because the tiny amounts I’m grinding don’t even get near the blades in my electric grinder, and it’s much easier to clean.
I own one, but I can’t say it gets a whole lot of use. Mostly when there’s some specific reason we can’t use a blender or blade-style spice grinder, or the amount of spices is too tiny to bother with the spice grinder for.
I think most people use the same piece of equipment they use to grind coffee beans. As for me, I used to have two coffee grinders, one dedicated to coffee and one for spices, but having decided I’m not enough of a coffee connoisseur to grind fresh beans all the time, one grinder devoted to spices is fine.
At the other end of the spectrum, a friend once showed me a great life hack if you need a mortar and pestle but don’t have one: a small ceramic bowl and a bottle of Tabasco sauce work just fine.
Or just cooking using spices in general. I use a blade-style coffee grinder for cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, coriander seeds, etc., because whole spices last essentially forever in my larder, and pre-ground spices lose all of their potency in fairly short order.
(just joking - I’m of the “if you can’t microwave it, just order it delivered” school of cooking. And I’ve cooked some truly spectacular meals just using my phone !)
He loved it. The only problem was keeping the other cat away. So I had to give her a little milk of her own, without the pills. Of course, then I had to keep them from each other’s milk.
Yeah, it’s a repurposed blade coffee grinder- Mr. Coffee, IIRC. I had that thing for a long time when I was single, and when I got married, we got a better burr coffee grinder as a gift, so the old blade grinder became the spice grinder.
Plus, they’re only like $15 anyway… a good mortar and pestle is more expensive!
And it’s possible to buy. For 150 British pounds. As I still don’t have a bigger kitchen, and have other things to do with that amount of money, I’m not buying it. If you have a bigger kitchen, more money, and are interested, it’s available here.
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