My girlfriend and I moved into a new flat together and now we´ve got at least 2 salt- and 2 pepper mills. We only need one of each kind and I wanted to ask, if somebody knows a good way to "clean" the mills and prepare them for reuse with another spice.
Is there an ideal, neutral substance for cleaning or any other trick?
The amount of salt that would stick to a dry mill is very small. Salt is also quite abrasive, cheap and water soluble. So to get pepper out I'd grind salt. For most savoury mixes a little salt won't hurt -- in fact you may well put a fair bit in the mix. If you really want to remove the salt, then wash it; just be sure to get it really dry before refilling. Leave it on a sunny windowsill for a few days, in a warm oven (depending on what it's made of, of course), or on a radiator.
There's no special trick to it, you don't want to use water to clean them as it's hard to dry them afterwards and you risk getting wet spices clogging things up. First I would empty the mill, then I would give it a few taps and shake as much as can out of it. Next I would use a brush and/or paper towel to clean the parts I can reach. Once it's as clean as I can get it I would run the new spice through the mill for as many turns as it takes to get the old spice out of the works.
I was looking for something like that: http://lifehacker.com/5558040/use-rice-or-bread-to-clean-coffee-and-spice-grinders
I´ll try today, if milling rice will solve my problem.. And I´ll tell you as soon as I tried, if that is valuable..
