Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsNot a food grinder, only buy for medicine.
Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2020
This isn't necessarily a bad product, but it's definitely over-marketing itself and it's not really a food grinder. I was led to believe from a couple of reviews that this could handle spices, and I should have known better.
What this handles well is dried green spices such as thyme and rosemary and rock-like substances such as salts. I think this is MAINLY designed for medicine pills. I popped a few tylenol pills in for the sake of this review and yes it does do those very well and very quickly. I didn't try fresh greens, but I highly suspect that it works well for crushing fresh green leaves.
It doesn't do well on other food. What I really wanted was something that can Indian spices, especially seeds (coriander seeds, black peppercorns, etc.) into powder and something that can make ginger and garlic paste. It can crush garlic and ginger, but it struggles to make a paste because the surface is too smooth. The food slides around rather than getting trapped in the grind, and there isn't a lot of grinding done even when you get it between the two pieces because of that same smooth surface. The pestle head is also much too small compared to the mortal as well. Seeds are worse. I can crush them, but even that is difficult (slippery, seeds jump out, takes a strong, direct blow with the small pestle head) and I can't get them anywhere near a powder. I also found that the efficiency quickly diminished further by adding more spices. Crushing anything is made much more difficult if there is more than a few seeds in the mortar.
I wouldn't recommend it at all for food--there's too many better materials, but I'd wholeheartedly recommend it to people needing to crush medicine. Unfortunately this has been a waste if money for me.
