Granite pestle and mortar - has anyone noticed grit in the food?

depends on the granite. if it’s large-grained, slightly weathered and exfoliated, then the softer, more erodable minerals could flake off and pit. choose the finest-textured ganite you could find.

and as the people here imply, the best pestle would be a hard rock with uniform mineral composition and texture. in college my classmate owned a beautiful mortar-pestle set ground from brown chalcedony. as lovely as any steuben piece.

I’ve got a Thai granite mortar similar to the one in pulykamell’s like upthread. Never had any problems with grit, and I use it almost daily, mostly for spices and pastes.

A food processor isn’t very good for grinding spices. I suppose an electrical spice grinder could do, but I find that you loose touch with the process.

And using a pestle & mortar is fun!

[QUOTE=Panurge]
And using a pestle & mortar is fun!
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Toss six allspice berries and three cloves into the food processor and see what happens. Might as well try to use a jackhammer to swat a fly. If you’re lucky, the wind of the spinning blade will bounce these things along. But the mortar and pestle will have them pulverized in less time than it would take for me to get the food processor, select a blade and put it together.

Yes, the granite mortar and pestle have a tendency to flake, little bits of stone come off into the food. I had one from Cole and Mason Cole and Mason Granite Pestle and Mortar - YouTube and it constantly crumbled black granite grit into my food :frowning: Alos, the mortar broke after only a couple of uses so I had to return it. Then I bought the standard mortar and pestle from Ikea, really cheap, great size (smaller than the cole and mason one, but lighter, the cole and mason one was too heavy, and the ikea is the perfect size for spice grinding). The ikea one is alos made from Marble, not granite, and I’m very happy with it :slight_smile: Marble is softer and it seems it doesn’t grind spices as efficiently as the granite. Also, it seems to me that all mortar and pestles (except porcellain and metal ones) loose bits of its material in the food, but because the marble grinds really fine I’ve never noticed anything, whereas the granite creates little chips of rock which is bad. Porcellain and metal mortar and pestles would be very difficult to use for grinding spices, I think they are not meant for this but for pharmaceutical purposes, grinding drugs etc. where you don’t want any traces of stone to go into the contents. I also have bought an electric spice grinder which works great, no material goes into the food (stainless steel container and blades) and it’s great for grinding larger quantities of spices.