CoffeeForums Coffee Facts

If you have had a used coffee grinder for a number of years and are planning to buy a new one you are going to have to decide what to do with the older one. You can toss it in the trash, or sell it at a yard sale. You can also find a new use for an old appliance and maybe even save some money.

The wonderful thing about used coffee grinders is that they are simply grinders. They are designed to grind most any food from coffee beans to flour and spices. Many professional chefs use old coffee grinders for multipurpose kitchen grinders and save the necessity of having several different grinding tools cluttering up the kitchen.

Using a coffee grinder for multiple purposes while it is still being used to grind your beans is never a good idea. The taste of everything you grind will end up permeating the flavor of the coffee. Only use these grinders for other purposes after you have replaced it with a good grinder that will be used exclusively for coffee beans.

Many people, from chefs to homemakers use old coffee bean grinders to grind and blend different spices. Most people keep the spices whole while storing to preserve the taste and need a quick way to grind and mix them. Mixing the spices with herbs or even ground mushrooms while you are grinding will save a great deal of time.

Two other uses for used coffee grinders are crushing nuts and grinding breadcrumbs to the desired consistency. Some people even use them to grind nuts and seeds to mix with bread flower and also to make powdered sugar in a hurry.

One important thing that has to be kept in mind, as mentioned briefly above, is that some flavors don't mix well with other flavors. Mixing very pungent spices with something like nuts will usually give you a flavor you won't appreciate. There are a lot of situations in which people will have allergies to various foods and the residual oils from many spices can permeate the blades of the grinder and mix with other blends.

So there is no sense in wasting a perfectly good appliance for your kitchen. The best use for that old coffee bean grinder is to repurpose it and continue to get its benefits without having to buy several other tools for your kitchen and cooking chores.