Saturday, June 14, 2014

The best of all pepper mills

It is actually a coffee grinder.

I discovered this by mistake. I bought one on impulse at an import store in Cherry Creek a decade ago, loved it so much grinding pepper that I went back for another to buy as a gift but they stopped carrying them. I think I paid something like $45.00 for mine and I see now the price hovers around $45.00 -- $65.00 generally. But I notice on Amazon they are offered "used" for  $15.00 + shipping. I'd snap up that one in an instant. *snap* like that. You simply cannot go wrong, for yourself, for a gift, whatever. I expect someone imagined using it for coffee and didn't care for how it worked on coffee beans, I don't know why someone wouldn't like it, style perhaps, but return them they do, and all that to your advantage.


The thing is, one grind and BLAM it satisfyingly dumps an entire serving of pepper.

Perfect for making salad dressings, twirl, twirl, and the whole bowl is coated with pepper.

No more of this grind grind grind grind grind grind grind grind grind grind just for a few black dots.

No more shake shake shake shake shake shake shake shake shake, come on! shake shake shake shake unscrew top, pour pepper, screw top back on.

Don't you hate it when at a restaurant when the waiter stands there with a gigantic wooden novelty pepper mill over your salad and says, "tell me when to stop" and grinds a full minute, taxing his poor wrists, and only five black dots fall onto your salad?  The grind can be adjusted, yes, but for some reason they all set them on low. Gawl!

The Turkish coffee mill is the opposite of that. 1/4 crank, dump, and your breakfast eggs are satisfyingly coated.  I do two or three full rotations. The little machine just works a lot better.

Disclosure: They are not precisely made. The pieces do not fit together with laser precision. Brass, elegantly but not space-age engineered, the pieces fit tightly but the crank fits loosely, somewhat wobbly, mine has a base that fans out and the tower leans from the base. Eh. I grind over steaming pots so the bottom tends to mess up. The brass turns various colors, and tends to schmutz.  Filling the tube requires undoing a bolt at the top, pulling off the folding grinding handle from the central post, pulling off the tightly fitting cap, filling the narrow brass cylinder, and then putting it back together. Filling it is not my favorite thing to do, and coffee beans would be worse, but it does hold such great quantity pepper corns, so what? It needn't be filled very often. I tend to spill pepper corns all over the place. At least one seed falls to the floor. Sometimes I manage without spilling any. That is a successful day.

And don't mess around either. I recommend buying the restaurant-size container of pepper corns. Then you don't have to think about pepper for another year, maybe two or even three.

Amazon prime $43.00 free shipping.
amazon turkish coffee mill: http://tinyurl.com/ks5g526
other options:
Today on Amazon, new, $15.00 + $14.00 shipping, $29.00  
))) zing (((
The next one down, new, $43.00 free shipping
The third one, new, $50.00 + $6.50 shipping.

EBay: Oh, very interesting. they have tons of them, all different styles.
ebay turkish coffee mills: http://tinyurl.com/klfmqvb

Used, very used, $16.00 + $8.50 shipping
New, bulbous bottom  $12.30 + $11.20 shipping
three pages different styles

I wouldn't bother with a short one, nor one that dumps into a box. What would be the point?

EBay seems the way to go. Get the page then select [Sort by best match] a dropdown menu appears and select "price + shipping lowest first" and skip all the short ones. If you haven't purchased on Ebay before, they use PayPal for payment and it is secure and easy as eating pie. They are very good for things like this. Their vendors are hungry for your good marks.

EBay also a great place to buy sea salt. I buy pounds of it at a time then I don't have to bother again for years. The Celtic sea salt cannot be beat. I notice the price is half now what I paid several times. When you taste a granule, you go, wow, I can actually detect the mineral content. Then intrigued you keep munching salt granules until your gills slam shut and your whole body goes "STOP IT ALREADY, YOU FREAK!" It really does enhance your food, compared to Kosher flakes that are near perfectly clean, and iodized salt that is just plain gross.

You can even buy smoked salt on eBay.

21 comments:

Aridog said...

A pound or more of Celtic Grey Sea Salt, coarse, sits in my cupboard at all times. I buy it in 8 ounce bags from a local green grocer. It is a necessity of life.

Chip Ahoy said...

Aridog, I was shocked at how low the price is on eBay right now. I wonder what happened. I paid $9.00 + a pound before and used it sparingly because of of the cost. Now I think I'll buy pounds and use it with undisciplined abandon on everything. And in spice shops the cost is outrageous.

Trooper York said...

I can't have salt anymore because of my heart so I have been doubling up on the pepper. I have one of these fancy peppermills and use it every day when cooking.

It is a very worthwhile investment.

Unknown said...

When you want to switch from pepper back to coffee - how do you clean it?
Or do you just let the pepper residue infuse a bit of coffee?

I'm asking because I used my coffee grinder to grind spices. now it's all covered in cardamom and other spices as well. You cannot stick a coffee grinder under water or in the dish washer. At most you can wipe it out. So - I either need to buy another coffee grinder and keep them separated, or I need to stick this electrical appliance in the dish washer.

Chip Ahoy said...

Run a few coffee beans through it, I imagine would clean the grinder mechanism.

For the electric mill, just wipe the inside and blades with a damp cloth.

Or chop up a cinnamon stick and don't clean it out for fantastic cinnamon-coffee flavor.

Or a few kernels of popcorn for something neutral.

I'm for spiced coffee.

But I'm also for owning two electric mills, one for coffee and another for spice. They're inexpensive enough.

Did I mention I burned out three of the cheapest electric mills? The most popular kind. Turning popcorn to powder in large batches did it. Finally I bought a heavy duty coffee mill but I use it for everything, milling popcorn, milling every type of hard bean imaginable. I mix it with water and form an incredibly tasting bean-sludge much like grits except bean-flavored. I even milled rice and made rice-flour and turned it to rice noodles. Because I just flat don't care. La la la I don't care.

I just now bought 7 LBS of celtic sea salt that got me free shipping. I know I'll use it eventually, and I'm sick and tired of running out of kosher salt.

Bread is pure crap without salt. So are lots of other things. With kosher flakes you use a lot more because it's so light.

And you need salt for your cells to work. Just as you need fat. The problem is processed food adds so much of it to fake you out. When you do most your own cooking you really do need salt.

My butter doesn't even have salt. They put salt in butter to fudge its freshness. Unsalted butter goes off more quickly. Salted butter is easier to manage on large scale distribution. And saltless butter is crap to taste. So you have to add it when cooking. Even to sweets.

Chip Ahoy said...

Trooper, have you tried seaweed flakes for its glutamate? Derived from seaweed. The Japanese guy coined the term umami, it's what the highly traduced MSG imitates. It does add considerable flavor and body to otherwise boring food, and brings out and enhances the inherent flavor of food. It's a very good fake out salt. Comes from the sea, after all.

I made bouillabaisse using some four different bases, ranging from the usual stock made of fish scraps to clam juice, but the very best bouillabaisse type soup of all used a Japanese style kombu katsuobushi dashi, a thin broth made of a sort of kombu tea with dry fish flakes added. The flakes are strained out, or left in if you don't mind them. Either way, the broth takes only a few minutes to make and can be extended in infinite ways. If sufficiently thin the dry fish flakes disintegrate. Bonito, a type of skipjack tuna. The Japanese have fish soup down Daddy-o. Then proceed the usual way adding any seafood, shellfish, crab, clams, mussels whatever you care to have. Then top it off with toasted croutons a red garlic/bread rouille (rue-ee). It's a bit funny, a sauce made with bread that is spread on bread, but there you go.

Several other bouillabaisse type soups. None are so good as the one using a Japanese dashi base.

Trooper York said...

The greatest "pepper" of all time.

Trooper York said...

Thanks for the tip Chip. I will try that. I have been using this thing called Bragg's liquid amino as an alternative to soy sauce because I do a lot of stir fry. Also "Dash" as a spice along with my own medley of chopped spices and herbs.

Trooper York said...

You do miss salt. The few times I have eaten out in a restaurant I have really tasted how heavily it is salted.

Rabel said...

Trooper,

I don't want to be the guy who killed Trooper York, but are you aware of the latest studies on salt consumption?

Here's a run down.

It would be interesting to know what a person with heart problems thought about this.

Trooper York said...

Here's the thing. I have congestive heart failure. My body fills up with water. Salt makes you retain water. So it is not necessarily the salt but the water retention that is the problem.

So no salt for me.

It's really hard.

rcocean said...

I like Salt. However, I'm skeptical of the whole "Kosher salt" thing. I just use regular salt. I don't drink bottled water either.

rcocean said...

Love seafood so I'll have to give your Dashi Bouillabaisse a try.

Aridog said...

Chip...on eBay the fine grind Celtic Grey seems to be what is less costly. The coarse grind I prefer is still high priced...some citations at $11+ / lb. I can do that locally at a good grocer I am lucky to have near-by.

Unknown said...

Excellent ideas.

Sorry I posted and ran off. I had to run. My cowgirl friend had a family crisis.

Shouting Thomas said...

Pepper is very important for steak.
'
I like a flat flake kind of grind.

Fr Martin Fox said...

Trooper:

My father had congestive heart failure; lived to 97.

rcommal said...

Love that spice grinder, and it's really sturdy: we've had ours for, I'm not sure how long exactly, but it certainly was well before our son was born. I use other grinders as well, but they have come and gone and been replaced over the years--just not as sturdy.

April Apple: I don't use the electric grinder for coffee also for spices (though, I now have an old one that formerly belonged to my parents' that I sometimes use for spices, but never coffee). However, my mom kept a dedicated, very soft small paintbrush to brush out the electric grinder after each use, and then she would also from time to time use a small piece of moistened cheesecloth with just a bit of diluted white vinegar to help remove residual oils. (Obviously, she would then "rinse" by using a bit of cheesecloth moistened with just water). The biggest problem with "sharing" the grinder among uses is the residual oily stuff--although of course that would depend on what kind of beans you use! I've found this works pretty well, and I do employ her method even though I don't "share" my coffee grinders.

Maybe this would work for you?

rcommal said...

I also use diluted white vinegar to clean out my actual coffee makers from time to time, but that's a different post. White vinegar is our friend! : )

rcommal said...

I also use diluted white vinegar to clean out my actual coffee makers from time to time, but that's a different post. White vinegar is our friend! : )

rcommal said...

Sorry for the double-post. I got a "whoops, that's an error message" from gmail.