The 6 Best Spice Grinders, According To Experts

To quote the Spice Girls, “All the people in the world, spice up your life!” There are few things more tragic than unseasoned food. Just imagine how dull life would be if all we had was bland chicken breasts and boring vegetables.

Our first instinct might be to buy a container of pre-ground spices, but if you really want to take your cooking to the next level, all it takes is a little DIY magic. It’s not just a little better to grind your own spices—it’s way better. According to Nicole Papantoniou, the Director of the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Kitchen Appliances & Culinary Innovation Lab, “Spices have oils in them that dissipate when they’re exposed to air. So they taste stronger and more potent when you grind them just before using.”

There are a variety of ways to grind your own spices, from pulverizing them in a food processor or blender to crushing them up the old-fashioned way with a mortar and pestle or even a rolling pin. But the best way by far is to use a designated spice grinder.

We sat down with Papantoniou to find the best spice grinder on the market. Whether you’re crushing some sweet, smokey, and savory spices for traditional Indian dishes like a homemade papdi chaat or you want to grind up some fresh cinnamon sticks to bake a sour cream coffee cake that tastes just like the one your grandma made, our picks are about to open up a whole new (and tasty) world for you.

Looking to stay on that grind? We have some coffee grinder recommendations we think you’ll love. (Because yes, you will need to use a separate grinder for coffee.)

Our top picks

• Best Spice Grinder: OXO Good Grips Contoured Mess-Free Pepper Grinder
• Best Budget Spice Grinder: OXO Good Grips Radial Grinder
• Best Splurge Spice Grinder: Cuisinart SG-3 Rechargeable Salt, Pepper and Spice Mill
• Most Versatile Spice Grinder: Kuhn Rikon Essential Adjustable Ratchet Grinder
• Easiest to Use Spice Grinder: Dreamfarm Ortwo One-Handed Pepper Mill
• Best Manual Spice Grinder: Peugeot Paris u'Select Pepper Food Grinder

How we picked these products

To find the best spice grinder, we turned to our friends at the Good Housekeeping Institute, who have identified the best and highest-rated brands and put them to the test. Their team of on-staff experts—which includes all types: engineers! data analysts! registered dietitians!—rigorously put everyday products to the test (and then more and more tests) in their New York City-based labs to determine which ones you can trust.

Grinding more than 4 ½ cups of peppercorns into 36 grams of freshly-ground black pepper, these Kitchen Tech Experts put a plethora of pepper mills (10, in fact) through rigorous tests to analyze their user-friendliness, accuracy of grind settings, efficiency, cleanability, weight, adaptability, and capacity and yield. After reviewing their findings and discussing their road tests in-depth with Papantoniou, we’ve determined that these are the best spice grinders you can buy in 2022.