All spice blends, especially if I'm about to add a rub to something. I adore rosemary, but abhor chomping on needles. For instance. Just a better consistency. Homogeneous.

I use mine mostly for crushing pills for the cat to mix into the food.

I have a little marble one and have used it to crush seeds for Indian dishes, and to crush garlic. It is mostly decorative because the side of a knife works nearly as well.

Storing junk on the kitchen mantlepiece. At the moment is contains a box of matches and a piece of ribbon left from Christmas. I rarely use it to grind anything.

I have a smallish porcelain one that i use mostly for cumin and coriander (cloves are very hard work and do better in the cofffee grinder). i have a slighly larger Japanese style ceramic one that doesnt get used as often. Been meaning to get a larger stone one for pesto.

I took a cooking class at The Blue Elephant in Bangkok. We each had a food processor, mortar and pestle, and burner at our station. A wonderful class! The most interesting dish were the squid fritters (puree the fish). Squid bodies make me a bit sqeamish but done this way not scary at all.

I use a small one to crush seeds/spices ... I use the large size molcajete to crush/combine jalapeno, cilantro, garlic and salt for my mojo sauce. I never used it for guacamole because I like a chunkier guac.

I use it typically when making Thai dishes.

It's supposed to be the best thing for making pesto.

Looks. but since it's in a drawer it isn't really appreciated.

Seriously, it's marble and I use it to crush certain spices. It does not get out much.

Molcajete Is the first thing that came to mind, although you would only be able to use it for serving. I have two small ones and one of them I use as a salt cellar.

Mine is a small marble one and it sits on the counter between the cooktop and oven. It gets used mainly for crushing small amounts of spices or sometimes making a spice paste. It has been used for crushing pills, but not very often.

I'm couious to hear from people who use a coffee grinder for spices. Is it a hand grinder? I find that when I used the small electric one I had, it affected the coffee taste. Any experience?

I have a marble one, and use it a lot to grind herbs and spices. I don’t use our coffee bean grinder, as I don’t want spice flavors in our coffee.

Spices, and I sometimes use it to pulverize bread/cracker crumbs too, when I don't want to wash the blender or food processor.

I bought a tiny one to grind up turmeric more finely, and use it to tint my face powder. I didn't like that, but I kept the mortar and pestle in the kitchen for other spice grinding.

Re: guacamole: I never understood that one. I just mash it in a regular bowl with a fork. A mortar and pestle can't be thrown in the dishwasher, and the bumpy texture is kind of hard to hand wash, so that's a no go for me.

A molcajete, which is rougher, should also be used to crush hard things. Restaurants use it to make tableside guacamole to put on a show. DO NOT CRUSH AVOCADOS! It makes them watery and nasty. A fork, or for a larger amount of avocados a multi-tined masher, is the best way. You just want to break up the avocacos, not pulverize them. You can use it for other things in the guacamole, especially whole spices and garlic, but there are easier ways to do it, unless the point is the workout. A smooth stone mortar will work okay for that, though the rough molcajete is better.

I have the little marble one, which is good for a pinch of hard seeds or spices, but for any quantity, I have spice grinders which do a better job. I also have a little ceramic grinding bowl, which has ridges and a wood pestle, which is great for things like garlic, but for most purposes, my heavy duty garlic press is fine, and easier. I like Carol's idea about the crackers, I usually use a rolling pin, but a large mortar would be great for that!

Re coffee grinders, I was given a small battery op one, but we don't drink coffee, so I used it for grinding spices for rubs—too much for my little marble mortar, and consistency doesn't really matter. The coffee grinder didn't do an even job, though I think it would have been fine for its intended purpose. To clean for making coffee, use hard stale bread, or a small handful of coffee beans you'll throw out, to get dust and residues out of the mechanism, but really, for best results, keep contaminants out of your coffee mill. There's nothing like hot water to bring out the flavors of the spice rsidues in your beverage.

I have four - two are marble, and I have one at each house. I have a Japanese ceramic one that is a bowl with ridges and a wooden one that I bought at an art sale from the wood carver who made it.

I use the marble ones for making a garlic paste with garlic and coarse salt. I often add black peppercorns and dill and crush those in the mortar as well. I also use the mortar to crack green cardamom, which I use in making tonic syrup. Other spices that I use it for include coriander, cumin, fennel, caraway, dill seeds, celery seeds, sesame seeds, etc.

I also have electric coffee grinders that are used only for spices. My brother has his own coffee grinders for coffee, and those are used for nothing else. I use the coffee grinder for spices that I want ground into a fine powder, and I use the mortar and pestle when I want to control the texture of the spices.

BTW, I had never heard of using turmeric to tint face powder before, but it sounds like a good idea.

I no longer have a molcajete, but I used to use it to make and serve salsa. I found it too messy to clean, and I stored it outdoors when I had it. I make guacamole in a bowl with a fork.

I have used a coffee grinder for spices .... but a different one than i use for coffee.

Once in a while we use them for powdering salt for popcorn. It's tedious, though.

I have 2 inexpensive grinders.....one for grinding flax seeds, the other I used for grinding dehydrated liver treats for the cats.

My mortar and pestle I use for grinding fennel seeds, dried rosemary, etc. I don't use it as much as I thought I would though.

I inherited one and recently gave it to my daughter. I used it so seldom I can't recall now what I ever used it for.

I have a porcelain Japanese one, mostly used for grating ginger, and a small marble one that I can't remember its use since I rarely buy whole spices. Well, I buy whole nutmeg, but I grate that on a microplane.

I have a really heavy brass one. I use it as a bookend.

I use mine to crush spices, mainly cumin. In a pinch, I also place spices in a Ziploc bag and go over them with a rolling pin.

I've only used them for pills.

If you use a coffee grinder for spices, you would want to have a different one for coffee...so, you'd want to have two separate coffee grinders. You wouldn't want your coffee to taste like peppercorns!!!!!

I have a marble one, similar use as many commenters above. Also a dedicated coffee grinder for spices - one thing I haven't seen mentioned above is that I use this coffee grinder to make garlic powder. Around this time of year my garlic (harvested in July) has largely dried out into hard little cloves. But they grind up into very flavorful garlic powder in the grinder.

It's also useful for making larger quantities of things like coriander and cloves- I can fill my spice jars with one "load" and then don't have to grind every time I need them for a recipe.

I have a couple of small ones, I use one for saffron mostly and the other I grind dried spices for rubs. I used to do peppercorns but now I do those with the back of a heavy copper pot on a chopping block when I do a lot of crushed pepper for my rib roast. I also have a seed mill which we mostly use to mill poppy seed or sesame seeds. I have a beautiful large porcelain and wood pestle that I got in an antique store which I don't use because I have no idea what it was used for originally. It looks lovely though in an old glass mortar.

We have the big, heavy and rough El Molcajete, which we serve like a hot rock filled with beef, chicken and shrimp, chorizo, nopales and monterrey cheese. Serve guacamole, pico de gallo, sour cream and flour tortillas on the side.

We heat it up really hot in the oven and then put the beef, chicken etc in their own little spots inside it. It's just kind of fun to put it in the middle of the table and serve family-style. Saw it served that way in a mexican restaurant years ago.

At work (I'm a school lab tech) I use one to make chalk dust and iron ore powder.

Grinding whole spices very rarely. I also use a premixed spice blend for things like ribs or pulled pork and it has a tendency to clump up. I use it to bust up the bigger clumps. Mostly, I use it for display. Its a really pretty shade of pink. Its a tiny le cruset one.

I was put off a mortar and pestle years ago because I foolishly bought a lava/basalt??? one from Indonesia. It was gritty. I was told it would wear in eventually and stop grinding bits of itself but I didn’t trust it. I can’t quite remember what I did with it. I either threw it out or left it in the garden at a house we sold.

To remember my first wife. She bought it to crush something. I really don't recall. It's one of the few things I still own from that time. Never used it for anything else. It sits on the highest shelf of the spice cabinet and has moved from house to house for almost 50 years.

I use mine for breaking bad.

(Kidding. Maybe.)

Like Lone Jack, my 3 sit in a drawer most of the time; but, like Lars, when I want to mash things together out comes the big one.

And, like Jack, my hands won't do a lot of real grinding anymore, so I use a dedicated electric "coffee" grinder to do the spices.... even dried herbs if I want them fine. After the herbs/spices are done, I run a little rice in the grinder to clean it. I never wash it.

I also have a coffee grinder just for coffee, but have now labled them as to use so others don't mess up the spice one. (I don't drink coffee so I don't care what happens to that one. 😜 )

To Honour my Pharmacist Father. The very large mortar and pestle are china and sit on a pedestal with a plaque because he was Pharmacist of the year once for the Illinois Pharmaceutical Association.

We use the small coffee grinder (small cylinder type that used to be $10-20) to grind spices at times. We don't use it for coffee these days, but you can clean it by wiping it out and then grinding a handful of rice in it. That's DH's toy now.

Raw grains of rice? I didn't know that!

I'd almost forgotten about that rice trick!

I use the same little electric coffee grinder for spices and coffee, and clean it very well after each use with a damp, soapy sponge, followed by a damp clean sponge and a wipe with a towel, and never have any problem with lingering flavors - maybe because the interior is stainless steel?

Tbh, I rarely use my mortar for spices because I rarely need to, mostly - only for amounts too small for the grinder. Mine is the larger plain porcelain kind, not the tiny one, and my pestle is wooden. I'd like to find a porcelain pestle for it, but I've been unable to find one sold by itself without the mortar.

I use the M&P to crush and seeds and to make a paste of spices with fresh garlic. I have a pepper grinder but have black peppercorns it in, if I need to crush white peppercorns, I do that with the M&P too.

For most of the seed and spice grinding, though, I use a small electric coffee grinder -- it's solely dedicated to spices. I carefully wash it out after each use with dish soap and water because any residue would affect the next batch of whatever -- I don't want my curry blend mucking up the fennel for the pasta sauce or whatever. It's pretty small and the way it's constructed I can wash out the stainless steel grinding part without getting water in the motor area if I'm careful and use a gentle stream of water.