No Food Processor? All You Need Is This Coffee Accessory To Make Custom Spice Blends

A food processor makes so many tasks in the kitchen a breeze compared to their manual counterparts, whether it's blitzing up a quick pie dough, shredding whole blocks of cheese, or whipping up ricotta cheese with herbs for a smooth and creamy dip. For making spice blends, however, a food processor just isn't the right tool for the job. Instead, one of our favorite unexpected ways to use a coffee grinder is to blitz up whole spices for a custom, fragrant spice blend. 

There are plenty of mistakes you could make with your coffee grinder, but grinding up spices with it isn't one of them. A food processor isn't the best choice for grinding spices, as the large blade and bowl means that the spices will end up being ground unevenly, even in a mini food processor. The very small bowl and blade of a coffee grinder are perfect for pulverizing small, dense things. Most whole spices are likely and less dense than a roasted coffee bean, which means a coffee grinder can blitz them up into a powder with ease. 

The world is your oyster when putting together you own spice blends, and there's so much room for customization. For holiday baking, grind up whole cinnamon sticks, allspice berries, and cloves, followed by a bit of powdered ginger and freshly grated nutmeg. For homemade Chinese five spice seasoning, throw whole Sichuan peppercorns, fennel seeds, cinnamon sticks, star anise pods, and cloves into a coffee grinder and blitz to a fine powder, followed by a quick pass through a fine mesh strainer to catch any larger chunks.

Making your own spice blend at home gives you total control over the flavor, something that even the fanciest or most expensive spice blends can't offer. Make sure to lightly toast whole spices like coriander, cumin, and fennel seeds to bring out the best flavor in the spices, but be sure to let the whole spices cool completely before grinding. Grinding spice blends at home also ensures that they are of the utmost freshness, as opposed to a store-bought spice blend, which could have been sitting on warehouse and grocery store shelves for months on end, losing its potency which therefore may lead to a dish that's lacking flavor.

By grinding your own blends, you can also make as much or as little as you need without worrying that the remaining 75% of the blend left in the store-bought spice jar will go to waste languishing in your pantry. On the other hand, if there's a spice blend you use frequently, like a spicy taco seasoning for weekly taco nights, you can make a large batch of taco seasoning knowing that it will get used up before it loses its potency. One thing to note is that your should clean your coffee grinder very well both before and after grinding spices, so that your coffee beans don't taste like cumin, and your garam masala blend doesn't contain hints of coffee.