The Tool You Need in Your Kitchen! Mortar & Pestle Guide

Get $10 off a Thai granite mortar and pestle with code PAILIN10 from https://krokcraft.com/pailin

Here’s the ultimate guide to Thai mortar and pestles. Everything you need to know including how to use, how to choose, and how to take care of you granite mortar and pestle.

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00:00 Introduction
00:53 Things you can use a mortar and pestle for
06:03 2 Main techniques for using the mortar and pestle
07:55 Why not use a food processor or blender?
09:04 Do you need to season a Thai granite mortar and pestle?
11:15 How to clean and care for a mortar and pestle
11:40 Choosing the right mortar and pestle
16:34 Choosing mortar and pestle material

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About Pai:

Pailin “Pai” Chongchitnant is the author of the Hot Thai Kitchen cookbook, co-host of a Canadian TV series One World Kitchen on Gusto TV, and creator and host of the YouTube channel Pailin’s Kitchen.

Pai was born and raised in southern Thailand where she spent much of her “playtime” in the kitchen. She traveled to Canada to study Nutritional Sciences at the University of British Columbia, and was later trained as a chef at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in San Francisco.

After working in both Western and Thai professional kitchens, she decided that her passion really lies in educating and empowering others to cook at home via YouTube videos, her cookbook, and cooking classes. She currently lives in Vancouver, and goes to Thailand every year to visit her family. Visit her at http://hot-thai-kitchen.com

So welcome to hot Thai Kitchen so if you’ve seen more than a few episodes of hot Thai Kitchen you’re going to notice that I use a pestel all the time this is a tool that is used all around the world but for Thai people it is absolutely core to our kitchen every

Thai Kitchen has one we use it for a gazillion things and today I want to share with you what we use it for because I think once you realize how you useful they are you’re going to want to join the club and in addition to that

I’m also going to address all the FAQs about these including how to choose the right one for you how to properly use it and how to take care of it this video is sponsored by cro a handmade granet Thai mortar and pestle and I’m going to use

It for my demo today and then I’ll tell you more about them later in the video let’s get started first what can you use a modern pezel for obviously we use it to crush things but let’s get more specific here are all the things that I regularly use it for peeling and

Chopping garlic I don’t know about you but it feels like 90% of everything that I cook involves garlic so peeling and chopping garlic is the bane of my being but it is much less painful in a modern pestel to peel it just give it a couple

Of good Smash and then the peel comes off super easily I don’t usually bother removing the bottom Brown bit of the garlic if it’s small and not hard but if it is hard you can just slice it off using the edge of the mortar as The Cutting Board

This is a trick that I learned from Thai street food venders when they don’t have space for a cutting board very handy for rough chop I can just pound it a few more times and leave it chunky good for stir fries but if you want it minced

Then I just keep going until it’s kind of a paste and because this bruises the garlic rather than just cutting them more cells are broken and you actually release more garlic flavor into the dish this is why pesto afficionados will insist that the mod peso is the best way

To make pesto you’re getting more bang for your buck next chilies when you chop chilies you’re going to end up with pieces of chilies and the heat will be in those pieces and not integrated into the dish and then you’ll end up with chili landmines all over the place which

If that’s what you want that’s fine but if you want the spiciness to be evenly integrated into the dish you want to pound your chilies into a paste now this doesn’t take long at all and FYI if you see pieces of chili skins left don’t worry about that that is not where the

Spicy is the goal is to disperse all the seeds break down most of the pith and the Flesh and any thin skins is not going to cause a problem alternatively you can also just gently crush a whole chili just until it’s broken and then let that Infuse gently into soups so

That you can easily remove the chili afterwards and the heat will just be gently released into the liquid next is a big category of dressing sauces and marinates and curry paste let’s just call them sauces for Simplicity many sauces Thai or otherwise will require you to add garlic chilies Ginger all

These tough aromatics that somehow need to be broken down and incorporated into the sauce this is one of my favorite uses of modern pestle instead of chopping or grating them one by one I can pound them all all at once and then again we’re mashing and bruising the cells releasing

Maximum flavor in a way that chopping just won’t do and then you can finish the whole thing in here it acts like a mixing bowl you can add your liquids your seasonings and then you don’t need to add any more dishes to the mess next you can grind fresh spices easily every

Time we all know that when it comes to spices the best flavor comes from grinding whole spices not using pre-ground spices because those lose their flavors very quickly but we all use ground spices and I totally get this because it’s such a hassle to like go find your spice grinder and like clear

Your clutter you just can plug it in and then do a thing all for half a teaspoon of cumin right like I totally get it but if you keep your pestel on the counter which I recommend you do you can just reach for it and this is how fast it

Will go I will show it to you in real time a teaspoon of cumin and that’s it nice and easy this is very easy to clean you can grind other spices in here if you’d like and it’s just way more convenient than dealing with one of these last couple of quick ones chopping

Nuts if you want to add like a handful of chop nuts over your salad on pancakes oatmeal whatever it happens to be you could chase them around with a knife on a cutting board which I hate doing because it always feels like you’re find eventually chasing individual nut that

Didn’t get hit or you can just give them a couple of quick pounds in a modern pestel and then everything is contained in a bowl ready to go finally I want to give you a quick tip for sesame seeds people like to sprinkle sesame seeds on all sorts of things all

The time but a lot of times you don’t really taste them because whole sesame seeds are not that aromatic because the aroma is trapped inside but if you give them a quick grind in the pestle like literally like this just so you can hear them break they still look whole but suddenly the

Smell really comes out FYI now let’s talk about Mor pestl technique this is going to be quick because it’s very simple there are two main techniques and that is pounding and grinding pounding is when we’re dealing with moist ingredients such as fresh herbs so it’s a simple up and down motion but if

You’re dealing with enough volume stuff will start to ride up the side so you’re also want to be like sliding the pestle down towards the center like this if if you have enough stuff in there there’s quite a bit of stuff in there it is helpful to have a rubber spatula so you

Can flip and fold things and redistribute things so that you don’t miss a spot grinding is a circular motion where you don’t lift the pestel like this this is great for dry and brittle things like spices or rice when I make toasted rice powder but before you grind

Let’s take these coriander seeds for example what you want to do is break them first with the pounding action because when you’ve got little balls like this and you start grinding they’re just going to like roll around under your pestle and then nothing happens so it helps to First

Crush until they break and then you have a little more traction before you start grinding and I find that alternating between pounding and grinding can really help but don’t overthink it once you do it it’ll be very intuitive what kind of motion is needed for this particular thing and when you’re hand grinding

Spices by the way you are not trying to go for that powdery fine texture that you get with store-bought commercially ground spices it is not necessary once you get down to like for coriander seed something like this where it’s just flaky that is more than enough to use it

In your dishes you’re just looking for things to not still be like in pieces that you can chew on anymore let’s get into some FAQs why not just use a blender or a food processor instead listen I own every kind of kitchen appliance you can think of you name it I

Got it because sometimes a blender or a food processor is exactly what you need but they are not without their limitations aside from the fact that it is a total pain to bring out one of these and clean them they require a minimum amount of food in order to work

Properly if you don’t have enough food in there the food will just stick to the side the blade just spins and nothing happens so these are made for bigger jobs but when you’re looking to do just a few cloves of garlic some chilies a handful of nuts modern pels do not have

A minimum limit you can grind one pepper corn in your biggest mortar and pestle if you wanted to and it’ll work great sometimes however you’ve seen on the show that I prefer to use a coffee grinder for dry things because if I have a lot of dry spices or if I’m doing

Dried chilies which are very hard to break down manually this just speeds it up so much so there is a time and a place for a coffee grinder do I need to season my Mor pestel before I use it this question comes up a lot and some people will recommend that you should

Grind some raw rice in it the first time in order to help clean out you know bits of rock that might come off into your food let me first say this when you use a pestle you’re grinding stone on Stone year in year out there is inevitably going to be tiny particles of

Granite that will come off over time you can tell because an old pestle will be smoother than when it started out this is fine because Granite is made from minerals that are not toxic so this is not a problem that you need to worry about in the same way that if you cook

Food in a cast iron pan some amount of iron is going to come off into your food and that is totally fine with that out of the way I have never done anything to my new Mor pestle aside from just giving it a good wash with dish soap and water a good

Quality well-made mortar and pestle should be already well finished on the inside and it should be smooth but it will have a natural texture of the stone which will help you grind things but it will not be like slick and shiny okay now grinding rice in it one time is

Probably not going to do much however if it’s not a good quality set if it’s not wellmade the inside might feel too rough and then there might be a reason to do an initial grind of some sort you could try rice but I hear people just doing an

Empty grind with a little bit of water until it feel smoother however if you feel that there’s gritty bits of stone in your food even with use and it just keeps happening over and over again that means that is a lowquality stone might not even be granite and you should get a new

One but in either case there’s no need to season it like you would a cast iron pan or carbon steel walk we don’t want to coat it with any material we just want bare Stone so then how do I take care of my Mor pesel just wash it with

Dish soap and water and air dry it with regular dishes there is nothing special that needs to be done growing up in Thailand I was never taught any kind of like specific way to take care of it because it’s so low maintenance I would not put it in the dishwasher because

Dishwasher chemicals are quite harsh and it might wear out the stone just handwash it to be safe here’s the big one how do I choose the right morar pestle for me so there are a few factors to consider but the biggest thing is probably size and in theory in theory

The bigger the better because it’s going to be more versatile it’s going to be more stable it’s going to have more power and it doesn’t have a minimum limit as we discussed if you get a small one aside from the fact that you can’t put too much food in there the pestel is

Going to be lighter and it’s going to have a harder time with tougher things like lemongrass or you know if you wanted to get things really really fine the obvious problem here is that the bigger it is the heavier it is and if it’s a pain to move around speaking from

Experience you will be less likely to use it so you have to strike a balance somewhere so this giant one was my first one for a long time it was the only one that I had but I got so tired of moving it especially up and down the sink on a

Few occasions I felt like I was going to throw my back out doing that so I finally got this one this is two cup capacity this is three cup capacity and this became my goto and eventually I got even a smaller one because if I’m doing

A few cloves of garlic even this is overkill right so in the ideal world you would have one of every size like I do but if you only want one here’s my recommendation one cup capacity is the smallest I would go any smaller than this and it starts to become not very

Useful but know that this is only going to be able to do light things like garlic chili spices a handful of nuts however the good news is that this is very light it’s very easy to move around and you will not think twice about using

This like you will use this all the time going up one step this is a two cup capacity this is probably a good allpurpose size for most people it can handle tougher things like lemongrass and ginger you can put a good amount of food in here but it is starting to get

Heavy enough that for a small person like me who’s very delicate I’m going to think twice before I pick it up right as opposed to this one I don’t even think about it at all if you were a big strong person maybe this is a no problem for

You if however you want maximum versatility you often cook for crowd so you’re often cooking large amount of food and you want to be able to do like handmade pesto and curry paste from time to time three cup is what you want both of these are three cups and I will also

Say that I don’t see a reason for you to get any bigger than this for most people this is as big as you need to go bottom line is you want to think about two things what do you want to use it for and what is the weight threshold that

Will not deter you from using it because the last thing we want is for this to just become a beautiful door stop and this brings me to our sponsor today so the problem of weight is something that c it out specifically to solve how can we make a large capacity Mor pestle that

Is lighter and more convenient to use and so they did that by replacing some of the base with removable Cork and also by making the wall thinner so it is large but light the pestle is a full-size one so it’s still heavy which is what you want but the morar itself I

Can lift with one hand which makes all the difference because I can just reach for it from where I’m standing now because it is lighter it does wiggle around a little bit more when you pound than an all Granite one of the same capacity but I promise you will use this

One way more just because it’s so much easier to move around the only time I use the big guy now is if I want to do curry paste from scratch by hand not that you can’t do it in here but it’s just more stable in a big one I don’t do

That much anymore these days so this guy doesn’t really get a ton of feel time croak also uses high quality Granite which means it’s denser and more durable poor quality Granite will is more porous and will wear out more over time and some of them will even break yes that

Does happen but a good one will last you a lifetime time the cork also has a bonus benefit of dampening pounding noises and protects your countertop if you’re using an all graned one You definitely want to put a cloth or something under it so that it doesn’t scratch your counter these are all

Individually Handmade by Thai Crafts People and croak is a small company run by great people based in Thailand I’m happy to be able to help them spread the word and with the holiday season coming up it makes a great gift for your foodie friends or yourself and if you use a

Link in the description below and use the code pyin 10 you can get $10 off your purchase so the choice of material is of course another thing to think about obviously I am partial towards Granite simply because it is the strongest for its size like if you have this made out

Of wood of this size it’s not going to do much right however you might have also seen this guy on my channel now this is made from clay and the pestle is made from wood you can also find the mortar of this shape also made from wood

This is what I call a light duty Mor pestle sometimes in Thailand we call this a la style Mort pestel and they’re made specifically for pounded salads like green papaya salad the aromatics are pounded first and then the vegetables everything is added into here that’s why it’s got to be big because

It’s basically a salad bowl and the pestel is light because you don’t want to annihilate all your vegetables it’s just like a light pan and tossing action if you want to get this in addition to a stone one welcome to the club but I would not have this as your only one

Because it is too light for a lot of things unless of course you want to make pounded salads all the time in which case yes have one of these but if you have one hot tip you can also make mashed potatoes in here but in general if it’s Marble or

Wood anything that’s pretty and instagramy generally too light to be useful and that is it I hope that answered all of your questions if I missed anything leave your questions in the comments below but if you want to ask them to me directly if you want to

Be able to chat with me on Discord join our patreon and that’s going to be one of the perks that you get and speaking of patreon a special thanks to all of our patreon members who help support the show directly if you want to know what

That’s all about check out the link in the description below thank you as always for watching and I will see you next time SOA