Originally, electric blade grinders were meant to grind coffee. But peek into almost any restaurant kitchen and you’ll discover that chefs use these handy little machines for grinding spices instead. It’s a practice that home cooks are adopting too -- and for good reason. When it comes to depth of flavor, ground spices from a jar just can’t compete with freshly ground whole spices.
We recently decided to investigate which electric blade coffee grinders adapt best to the task of grinding spices. And after pulverizing mounds of spices with ten widely available models, we learned that some handle the conversion much better than others.
Some grinders simply can’t handle the small quantities of spices that recipes often call for. The spices either sit untouched below the blades or swirl above their reach. Some grinders’ blades aren’t sharp enough to swiftly crush hard spices, like peppercorns. And speed matters -- the longer it takes to grind spices, the more likely they are to overheat and degrade in flavor. Then there are the design flaws: one product we tested leaked so profusely that it left a ring-shaped pile of ground spices on the counter.
But there’s good news, too. We found nearly as many stellar grinders as imperfect ones. For these champs, no spice was too small, too large, too soft, nor too hard to grind. And no quantity, be it a mere teaspoon or a whopping three tablespoons, proved an obstacle.
