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From the episode: Autumn Supper
Pepper mills come in a vast range of styles and materials, but what really matters to us and other serious home cooks is performance.
Season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Almost every savory recipe out there contains some variation of the phrase. Of course, rendering whole peppercorns fine requires a pepper mill, a kitchen tool for which function usually follows fashion. Pepper mills come in a vast range of styles and materials, but what really matters to us and other serious home cooks is performance. Is the fine-ground pepper truly fine? Is the medium grind really medium, or are there coarse particles mixed in? And how about output? Will you have to turn and turn and turn until your arm needs a brace to produce a teaspoon of ground pepper?
Most pepper mills work by similar means. Peppercorns are loaded into a central chamber, through which runs a metal shaft. Near the bottom of the mill, the shaft is connected to a grinding mechanism that consists of a rotating, grooved "male" head that fits into a stationary, grooved "female" ring. Near the top of the male piece, the grooves are larger to crack the peppercorns and feed the smaller pieces downward to be ground between the finer grooves, or teeth, of the male and female components. To a reasonable point, the finer the grind, the more evenly the pepper will be distributed throughout a dish. Thus the quality of a pepper mill's fine grind is more important than options for an endless range of grinds beyond fine, medium, and coarse.
The specifics of the grinding mechanism are key to grind quality, especially the size, number, and angle of teeth in both male and female grinder components. A related consideration is how well the male and female grinding pieces are machined (the process used to cut the grooves). Sharper teeth combined with a very tight tolerance between the pieces yield a better grind, which to us means finer fine-ground pepper. Machinery is also important to delivering maximum output. To attain maximum output for minimal effort, the quality of the machining is important, as is the size of the grinding mechanism.
Grind quality and speed are only half the battle—especially if most of your peppercorns land on the floor when you try to fill the mill. So we appreciated mills with wide, unobstructed filler doors that could accommodate the tip of a wide funnel or, better yet, the lip of a bag or jar so that we could dispense with the funnel altogether. Along the same lines, the more peppercorns a mill could hold, the less often it has to be filled. Large capacity-—about one-half cup or more—is an asset.
The ease of adjusting the grind was another factor we considered. Changing the grind from fine to coarse involves changing the tolerances of, or distances between, the male and female grinding components. The more space between
them, the larger the pepper particles and the coarser the grind. Traditionally, a knob at the top of the mill called the finial is used to adjust the grind. This was our least favorite design for two reasons. First, the finial must be screwed down very tight for a fine grind, which not only requires significant finger strength but also makes the head (or the crank) of the mill more difficult to turn. Second, the finial usually has to be removed entirely to fill the mill, which means you have to readjust the grind with each filling. We preferred mills which use a screw or dial at the base of the grinding mechanism.
During research, we came across several electric models. Unfortunately, they had a “cheap” construction, which “felt like it might fall apart.” Most important, the mills were incapable of producing finely ground pepper. We can’t recommend any of them.
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