Using a Mortar and Pestle

I often see expensive mortar and pestle sets in fancy kitchen stores and catalogs.- Chef's castle has an "authentic Mexican Molcajete" for $42. Williams Sonoma has a marble one for $99. There are a lot of fancy laminated wood sets, too, which are manage to be attractive, expensive, and useless. A mortar and pestle is a tremendously useful kitchen implement, and it doesn't have to be expensive. It should, however, be fairly robust, and be made of stone, preferably with an unpolished interior surface, like this model from Ikea that cost me all of $10.

There are two functions you can perform with a mortar and pestle: Pounding, and grinding. Most people only try to use them for pounding, when most of the time they should be grinding. Pounding is for reducing soft foods to a paste, as with breaking down meat fibers,  or making pesto or other mayonnaise-type emulsions. To make pesto,  start with the pine nuts, pound them to a paste, add the basil, pound that, and then slowly add the olive oil, continuing to pound away. You don't use the pestle like a hammer. You let the weight of the pestle do the work. That's why you need a pestle with some heft to it.

A lot of people make the mistake of trying to grind herbs and spices in a  mortar by pounding with the pestle. What you get is a shower of seeds and dried herbs all over your counter and floor.  Instead of pounding, hold the pestle as seen here and move it in a circular motion around the mortar. You don't need to apply a lot of pressure; as when pounding, let the weight of the pestle do the work for you. Just keep up a circular motion, either clockwise of counter-clockwise, whichever is more comfortable for you.

If you don't have an Ikea or a good Mexican grocery near you, you can find some decent mortars here at Amazon.