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Nutmeg mills.

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Years ago I used to just scrape nutmegs with a knife.

Until I had a visitor from Germany who watched my cooking and exclaimed: "Why don't you use a nutmeg mill?"

Whu?

So I set about locating a nutmeg mill.

There are no nutmeg mills to be found in any stores in Helsinki. Or at least, that was the case 15 or so years ago, when I really did look everywhere. Part of the problem is that grocery stores don't stock whole nutmegs over here, cos of teenage abuse. It's a pity for cooks, cos pre-ground nutmeg just isn't the same. I'll not dwell on the idiocy of said abuse, except to say that no teenager abuses nutmeg twice: it's ghastly, and "gutblowing" describes the experience far better than mindblowing. I'm told. Me, I'm not into psychoactives at all, and never will be, and so I use nutmegs only in my cooking.

Anyway, the next time I was in Germany I visited cooking stores in order to find a nutmeg mill.

And I've bought one (or more) every time I've seen them, ever since. (Never in Finland - my latest find is from a tourist shop in Bodö, Norway, of all places.) So now I have three, cos I've given away a few of them, too. Here's a pic of them:
Photo: Nutmeg mills. Pic: Three different nutmeg mills.

The one in the middle stores whole nutmegs in its flared-out waist, and all of them take a single nutmeg which is pressed by a spring onto the scraper bottom. They all work, but currently I like the peppermill-like one best, cos it's my newest.

Much better than scraping with a knife, are nutmeg mills.

Comments

I find a very fine pointy side of a normal box grater works very well for freshly grated nutmeg. Or if you can find it, the cute little nutmeg graters that you can store nutmegs in.
The last bottle of nutmeg I bought from the supermarket even came with such a tiny grater that fits inside the bottle. It's very flimsy metal but it does its job pretty well.

Thanks, I forgot the nutmeg graters. Alas, nutmegs are too small for those graters, so you end up grating your fingers every now and then. And I quite like my fingers.

What a grand idea! I never imagined... I thought it was pre-ground, grater pointy side or nuttin'.

I want one. Thanks! (I knew there was a good reason to subscribe to this site's RSS feed. :)

Glad you liked the idea.