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What Can You Make with a Mortar and Pestle? 10 Essential Kitchen Uses

Humus KROK mortar and pestle

If you recently purchased your KROK Mortar and Pestle, or were gifted one, you might not know all the different kitchen uses it has. While the KROK is beautiful, it’s not meant to sit on your counter collecting dust. This tool is an everyday culinary workhouse, not a museum piece. 

The main reason you should use this for everyday recipes is the quality and taste of your final dish. Using a food processor will just chop ingredients into smaller, bitter fragments. Using the KROK mortar and pestle crushes the ingredients, rupturing cell walls and releasing aromatics, essential oils, and flavor compounds that a food processor can never reach. 

To get you started, we’ve laid out ten essential kitchen uses for the mortar and pestle. Some are quick and easy steps, and some are multi-ingredient, multi-step recipes. We’ll link to a few recipes for each use to give you some ideas. But experiment, use the ingredients you have around, and taste the difference this ancient tool can bring to your kitchen. 

1. Whole Spices, Masalas, and Chili Powders

Probably one of the quickest updates to your daily cooking is with whole spices. Instead of buying pre-ground spices, especially something like black pepper, buy the whole spice and grind when needed. Pre-ground spices start to lose potency as soon as they're ground, so by the time it’s in your kitchen, how much flavor and aroma is already lost? And how long is it in your kitchen before it’s used up?

Another benefit of grinding your spices is having total control of texture. Using black pepper as an example, you might want very coarse pepper for a steak but very fine pepper for a soup. The mortar and pestle gives you the chance to access the exact texture you need. 

The next time you’re adding black pepper to any recipe, grab the whole peppercorns. Throw a few in the KROK mortar and pound down to the texture you want. This freshly ground pepper will dramatically change the flavor of whatever you’re cooking. 

Here are two recipes to try out, a simple chili powder and a bit more complex garam masala:

2. Fresh Pastes and Flavor Bases

Another huge benefit of the mortar and pestle is for smashing hard ingredients into smooth, digestible pieces. You can make pastes and curries in a food processor (if it’s strong enough to handle tough ingredients), but the food processor will only cut the ingredients into smaller, still hard pieces. Using a heavy granite pestle breaks the ingredients down so that there are no difficult-to-chew or swallow pieces left in our pastes. 

Using the mortar also allows you to build up your flavor bases, as each ingredient might need a different technique. Start with the very hard items, smashing down as much as you can. Then, add leafy herbs or lighter ingredients, and you only need the pestle to grind these down. Finally, add liquids and other wet ingredients, and swirl your pestle around to emulsify the paste, sauce, or whatever you’re making. 

This guarantees each ingredient is handled as needed, and builds up a more flavorful base for your recipe. This is also what the Thai granite mortar and pestle, and the KROK, was specifically made for. Here are three Thai recipes to showcase this use:

3. Traditional Italian Pestos and Herb Sauces

Now focusing on the emulsification technique, this is another use where the mortar and pestle outshines a food processor. Between the heat produced by the blades and the rough, unnecessary stirring, a food processor cannot achieve the same smooth, emulsified texture that the mortar and pestle can. 

Pestos and herb sauces focus on lighter ingredients: garlic, nuts, herbs, cheese, and oils. Since Italian pestos are traditionally made with a marble mortar and wooden pestle, this is a perfect opportunity to use KROK’s mango wooden pestle. This lighter pestle will better handle these delicate herbs and won’t tire you out as quickly while stirring and swirling for emulsification. 

We’ve collected a good amount of pesto recipes from our Italian friends, traditional and experimental. Start with a classic basil pesto, then work your way through the ones that sound tasty to you:

4. Sambals, Salsas, and Dipping Sauces

Traditional, and still the best way to accomplish great flavors: using your mortar and pestle for these bright, acid-driven, and fiery condiments from across Southeast Asia and Latin America. These sauces balance sweet, sour, salty, and heat, and can all be made in the mortar. 

From Indonesia to Thailand to Mexico, from well-known to very local, these dips and sauces should be added to your next table no matter the dishes:

5. Finishing Herbs, Bright Rubs, and Pan Dressings

Herb-packed green condiments can be quickly made in the mortar and pestle, in large batches or single servings. Since these focus on the fresh herbs, it would be another good use for the mango wooden pestle. 

Toss the salsa verde on a salad or boiled baby potatoes. Spoon the chimichurri onto steak or chicken right off the grill. Scatter the gremolata over roasted root vegetables or onto a soup. Or try them all:

6. Emulsified Dressings, Aiolis, and Dips

One of the quickest transformations of an ingredient that the mortar and pestle causes is a whole garlic clove into a smooth paste. Throw a few cloves in the mortar, hit each one with the pestle to make skin removal quick and easy, then grind down as smooth as you want it. 

This garlic paste has many uses and is the base for the three recipes below. But you can also grind down large amounts of garlic and save the paste in a jar for later use. Whether you’re doing just a few cloves or whole bulbs, here’s how to use that paste:

7. Pounded Salads and Bruised Herb Dishes

Another good use of the pestle is to tenderize and/or bruise ingredients to let flavors penetrate deeply before serving or lightly cooking. Instead of completely crushing ingredients into a smooth paste, leaving it coarse and rough lets the paste or sauce grab onto the protein or noodle and stay. 

These recipes can quickly move from completely pounding toasted rice into a powder, crushing chili skins, then lightly bruising fresh herbs. You just need to choose Thailand or Italy:

8. Craft Cocktails and Drink Muddling

Most people don’t think of cocktails when they think of mortars and pestles, but this tool offers numerous benefits to make that drink even tastier. From something as simple as crushing ice to extracting essential oils from citrus peels, or bruising herbs and peppers to muddling fruit, there’s so much you can do. 

While you probably don’t need a recipe to crush ice, here are a few cocktails that you can make using the KROK:

9. Nuts, Seeds, and Textured Toppings

So many great dishes and desserts have a textured topping of nuts, seeds, or other ingredients. You can buy pre-crushed toppings, but these are usually lacking in freshness or have odd textures. Using your KROK mortar and pestle for these toppings gives you control over that perfectly uneven texture you need for toppings, crusts, and garnishes, without turning ingredients into either dust or some type of oily butter. 

While we currently don’t have a recipe specifically for textured toppings, this is an easily achievable final ingredient. For your next stir-fry, toast a few peanuts, crush them into a rough texture, and throw them on top. For a dessert, you can break down a few almonds or walnuts (or whatever nut you desire) and sprinkle on top. For your next salad dressing, crack sesame seeds in the mortar before stirring into the dressing. 

10. Everyday Prep Hacks & Quick Crushes

This is another section without recipes, but keep your KROK mortar and pestle close to your kitchen workstation so that it’s ready for small, high-frequency kitchen shortcuts to save time during your meal prep. Here are just a few ideas (with some already being mentioned):

  • To remove garlic skins, throw the whole clove into the mortar and hit it once with the pestle. The skin now easily comes off. 

  • For flavored salt, add some flaky sea salt and dried herbs, crush and combine, then either cook with the salt or put it in a small dish for the table. 

  • Crush whole peppercorns for steaks, pasta, or literally anywhere the recipe calls for pepper. To maximize flavor even more, toast the peppercorns in a dry skillet before crushing. 

  • To make a compound butter, use the mortar to pound room-temperature butter until creamy, then add any additional ingredients and mix. Roll it into cling wrap or foil and refrigerate for future use. 

  • For a non-kitchen use, mortars are the easiest way to crush oversized vitamins, pet medications, or supplements into a fine powder to blend into smoothies, yogurt, or pet food without dealing with clumsy hand-held pill crushers. 

The easiest way to build your mortar and pestle confidence is to start with simple tasks like crushing garlic or individual spices like peppercorns. As you work this tool into your daily routines and expand your techniques and recipes, the mortar and pestle will soon be your indispensable kitchen tool that it has been for the last 40,000 years. 

 

 

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