White Pepper Grinder

I have an assortment of peppers, and salts that I've been playing with. Over the years, I've had numerous pepper and salt grinders, but have settled on the Unicorn for my choice of a good grinder that delivers every time. I ordered some extra-bold pepper from Penzey's and wanted to put it into my smaller black Unicorn but
Malaysian Sarawak white peppercorns were in it. I wondered why Unicorn did not make a white one....or maybe they do now....so I checked and sure enough there is a small white one with it's own pepper dust catcher. It arrived today and I filled it with my white peppercorns. Next to my stove I have quite a collection of salt and pepper grinders. They look very gourmet, and are the ones I use the most. Very fun. So how about you, do you play around with different salts, and peppers? How do you have them set up for delivery to food?

[Robin Garr]

Karen, I love to use white pepper in certain dishes, mostly either for appearance - I don't want black flyspecks in a white sauce - or for flavor, when that distinctly different gentle-but-pungent white pepper flavor is what I'm after.

Oddly, though, I've never thought about getting a dedicated grinder. Instead, I have a small porcelain mortar-and-pestle at my kitchen work station, and when I'm needing white pepper, I grab a few pepper corns and grind to order.

The other one that comes to mind is Sichuan peppercorns, which I think is a different botanical family than the true peppers, but they sure look and act like peppercorns! I always dry-toast them in a small black iron skillet, then grind. It keeps well, so I'll usually grind an ounce or two and keep it in a small airtight vial. Just used some tonight for Ma Po Tofu!

I have one for black, one for white, and one for grains of paradise. The black is Penzey's Tellicherry Extra Bold, which the grinder does not handle smoothly (and, yes, that annoys me). The grains of paradise are from a nearby shop; I use them as an alternative to black pepper but only occasionally. And, as my recent spice cabinet clean-up proved, I own two white peppers (Indonesian Muntok and Malaysian Sarawak) and I don't know which one is in the grinder!

We don't have a grinder for white pepper, which means that I end up using it less than I should. I'll have to check into getting a small one for that purpose.

Boy, do I have pepper grinders!

- one that grinds fine, medium or coarse
- one for white pepper
- one that is so coarse that it's effectively cracked pepper
- one that grinds a mixture of red, green, black and white (mostly for show)
- a one handed grinder for times when I'm salting/peppering meat on all sides and don't want to be washing my hands between sides
- individual small grinders for dinner parties

No salt grinders, but I do have containers of fleur du sel, fine sea salt and Maldon sea salt at hand.

We use two very old Peugeot's for cooking, one brown w/black and one tan w/white. On the table we have an acrylic grinder with multicolored pepper in it.