60-Second Video Tips: Power to the Pepper

If you find yourself needing a lot of freshly ground pepper—fast—sometimes it's worth using a more powerful tool from the arsenal (as Bryan Roof gamely demonstrates).

Watch more 60-Second Video Tips at

America's Test Kitchen is a real 2,500 square foot test kitchen located just outside of Boston that is home to more than three dozen full-time cooks and product testers. Our mission is simple: to develop the absolute best recipes for all of your favorite foods. To do this, we test each recipe 30, 40, sometimes as many as 70 times, until we arrive at the combination of ingredients, technique, temperature, cooking time, and equipment that yields the best, most-foolproof recipe.

Each week, the cast of America's Test Kitchen brings the recipes, testings, and tastings from Cook's Illustrated magazine to life on our public television series. With more than 2 million viewers per episode, we are the most-watched cooking show on public television.

More than 1.3 million home cooks rely on Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country magazines to provide trusted recipes that work, honest ratings of equipment and supermarket ingredients, and kitchen tips.

Follow us:

[boojumhunter]

If you often need to grind lots of pepper, buy an inexpensive hand coffee mill. You get an easily adjustable range of grind sizes and quick output.

[urbanbohemiandc]

Might be easier to use a mini-chopper or mortar & pestle. Also it didn't look like the pepper mill was taking kindly to the drill. Not a lot of difference.

[jacksoncasper]

I don’t know if this is a joke, but I like it

[JDoors]

Except that hand mills are not designed to be driven at those speeds and you will get metal filings in your pepper. Yum!

[enesekici]

Thank God we now have battery powered pepper grinders

[marilynturcotte]

Hahahaha!! Just grab a spice grinder and use it! Now if I need a pound of the ground pepper, maybe.

[trsmith]

You should credit Alton brown for this.

[TylerJMacDonald]

this guy's been watching too much Home Improvement!

[rushnerd]

Didn't look like it was doing a whole lot there.

[customerservice]

Sorry guys Alton Brown came up with that trick long before you.

[tsurugikekkaishi]

its fun..but not practical on real kitchen.

[PerfectionObsessive]

@DuaneEH your metal pieces come off just by turning them? You should stop buying Chinese made products.