Mortar and Pestle | Hot Sweet Spicy Recipes

Mortar and pestle is quite an important and efficient kitchen tool with a history before any grinders, blenders, food processors or choppers became an essential appliance in homes. Recollecting my childhood home in Hyderabad, India, I remember our home had multiple kinds of Mortar and Pestle’s which we used for various different reasons.

Porcelain Mortar Pestle

Mortar and Pestle derive from the Latin root words mortarium and pistillum, which mean “receptacle for pounding” and “pounder”. They were often related to an Apothecary, which reminds me of our small porcelain mortar with a small porcelain and wood pestle which my father used to powder tablets to feed to us when we were younger and had trouble swallowing tablets.

Molcajete – Mexican Lava Rock Stone Mortar and Pestle	Cast Iron Mortar Pestle	My Marble Mortar and Pestle
Granite Mortar and Pestle	Large Rock Mortar and Pestle	Rhythmic pounding of Grain by groups of women in a large Mortar

Spices like cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and cumin were ground by my mom in a medium sized heavy iron mortar and pestle, which was perfect for this process. She had another medium sized wide mouth mortar pestle made of stone in which she crushed ginger or garlic cloves or herbs to paste or used to semi crush some chutney which needed a chopped texture etc. And of course the biggest mortar and pestle we had was a large stone one in our backyard. This was used for special large scale grinding which could not be done in the blenders or food processors. This large mortar and pestle was mostly used when our maid servant helped my mom to grind some rice powder or make lentil batter or large scale grinding for making Indian pickles.

Now we have the most efficient of blenders and food processors, but still I use my mortar and pestle to smack my cardamoms to drop into my tea or chai, or freshly grinding some garam masala to top off my curry, or crushing piece of fresh ginger to mix with honey for my bad cough or making a green chillies and onion chutney which needs to be only semi crushed which no electronic gadget does in perfection.

Many years ago when I couldn’t find the perfect wide mouth mortar and pestle, I imported my marble mortar and pestle all the way from India. But now in the market I see all kinds of interesting ones. Check out some of the interesting ones below.