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A blade grinder produces spices of many different sizes, and I have no intention of using a mortar and pestle — on account of it being the 21st century, and due to my lack of confidence that they test the marble for (trace) radioactivity.

Does it make sense to use a burr grinder to crack spices into a uniform size? Will there be any surprises, such as cumin getting stuck in the "teeth"? In case it matters, I'd be using settings from a smallish ("5-6") to the largest ("14") coffee grind sizes.

To be clear, a burr grinder cannot be (easily) cleaned. (The best one can do is to pass parboiled rice.) Hence you'd always be getting a bit of the taste of your last dish in your present one, but if you're cooking a large enough quantity, that's not a big deal, and it can even remove the monotony of repeating to the letter a recipe that you like. And in any case a blade grinder cannot be easily cleaned either (which leaves +1 for the mortar and pestle).

Sam7919
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A good-quality burr grinder will yield a more even grind than a blade grinder. That's why coffee people like them, after all. I'm not sure why an uneven grind would be a problem for you as long as everything's ground fine enough (for that matter I'm not sure why using something invented in a different century would be a problem for you), so I wouldn't necessarily say that it "makes sense", but if you're just asking "will it produce a more uniform grind" the answer is yes. And I can't think of any spices which are as oily and resistant to flowing as coffee grounds (maybe nutmeg, but of course you're not going to be grinding whole nutmegs in a repurposed coffee grinder), so I don't think you'll have issues with things getting stuck.

Sneftel
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