When you run one of the country’s best online restaurant supply stores, every meal that we eat in a restaurant also becomes a study of the tools and equipment that are within the restaurant. In the last restaurant we went to, an Indian restaurant, we were more amazed at what apparently wasn’t in the kitchen.
We’re appetizer fiends, and Indian cuisine lends itself to making some of the best appetizers in the world. We’re in love with samosas (not to be confused with mimosas!) because when they’re cooked well, the pastry is absolutely divine.
So, we ordered samosas. And in those samosas, there were whole coriander seeds. Hard, crunchy, burst of inappropriate spice coriander seeds. While we’re fans of the flavor of coriander, we realized that this restaurant really needed a spice grinder.
The difference between commercial spice grinders and home spice grinders is the power. The more RPM that a commercial spice grinder has, the more able it is to keep up with the hard spices like nutmeg and certain berries and nuts. A commercial spice grinder can handle coriander with relative ease.
3 Reasons Not to Need a Spice Grinder
Spice grinders are essential for certain restaurants, as they’re prone to needing freshly ground spices and coffees on a continual basis. There are, sadly to say, certain restaurants which don’t need to have one of these excellent tools on hand.
- Using prepackaged and prespiced material
If you’re using a rethermalizer to reheat the prepackaged and prespiced food that you’re serving in your restaurant, there’s a high likelihood that you’re not going to need to a spice grinder in your cooking arsenal.
- Serving only sandwiches
Sandwiches rarely need spice blends to make the sandwich taste better. If you’re a place like Subway, you’re most likely receiving the salt (a mineral, but still ground in the spice grinder) and pepper blend in giant bags or containers anyway.
- There’s more than one spice?
Why would you need to have a spice grinder if the only spice that you use in the restaurant is salt? That comes in those convenient little cylinders, after all.
Most chefs, however, use a variety of spices designed to ignite the palate in wonderful and exciting ways. Spice grinders are incredible to have on hand in the following situations:
3 Reasons Why We Need Spice Grinders (among many)
- Making huge quantities of barbeque
There is a certain art to barbequing. It’s not simply throwing meat onto a spit, open flame, or pit. There’s rubs and rituals that go into making great ‘cue. Freshly ground spices are the way to go, so when you get it in bulk, a spice grinder can easily break it down for you while you mix.
- You’re handcrafting sodas and syrups
Chances are, you’ve already learned the miracles of having a spice grinder on hand if you’re handcrafting your sodas and syrups. Extracting the best parts of the spices requires freshly ground materials, materials which only that spice grinder can give you.
- Coffee
Grinding your own coffee for your patrons? Coffee beans are hard enough to need a dedicated spice grinder on the premises. That freshly ground and freshly brewed coffee will receive a premium at your restaurant, making the extra effort worth it.
When choosing the right spice grinder, you have to look at the power that the grinder has and the frequency that you’ll need it. The essential rule of thumb for purchasing a commercial spice grinder is that if the need comes up more than once a week, you need one in the restaurant.
Special thanks go to Sudhamshu Hebbar on Flickr for the Creative Commons use of the picture.
