Posted: 11/16/2008 10:11:38 AM EDT
I saw a corn grinder at a local mexican grocery store, and my prepper-sense went off. It was hand powered, and built pretty robustly. It was like 30 bucks or something. Could this be used for grains too (yeah, I know corn is technically a grain  ).
They also had mortar and pestles there too for 26 bucks. Kind of cool... Too bad there is no apothocary class in nursing school...lol jim |
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Not sure what would be the difference between a corn grinder an grain grinder, other than, at least in southern cooking, corn is never groud as fine as wheat flour. I assume this is true of mexican cooking as well. And gettign a fine grind with some reasonable amount of effort is what makes people buy the $200 grinders.
If you don't worrry about texture, it should work fine. And the morter and pestle is used for crushing your own spices, either because you grew them, or stored the whole seed/leaf/etc |
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I've got a grain grinder and let me tell you it's a lot of work for little reward. (but one of the evil necessities) Plan on having other there to help you. I plan on doing a google search for a way to hook a bike up to it.
Be careful going too cheap. Sometimes you get what you pay for. |
| I own one called Corona, made in Columbia. It is HARD to turn, and the production is 'chunky'. It works some on other grains, but takes minimum of 3 grunting pass-thru's to make usable flour. Mine was 'tinned' internally with-in an inch of it's life; and peppered the early output with metal chunks and much grey powder. I also have a good mill and there is no comparison. Corona is better than nothing, but, this is 1 time you get what you pay for....and nothing more. |
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Corn grinder works great for corn. It's also great for cracking malted barley for making beer.
For wheat, it can be used for making porridge. Like cream of wheat. (Better than nothing.) In a pinch it might be able to grind really coarse flour from wheat by running it through a few times. Again, better than nothing. I have a few good flour mills and a corn grinder as well as my third backup. And for making beer of course. |
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We've got a nock-off of the corona, we need to sift the grindings for usable flour
then grind/sift again three times to get full use of the grain we use the leftover wheat for breakfast cerial like scotch oats, the left over corn chunks we feed to the chickens. you might try loosening the plates for the first pass. |