There are several great spice grinders out there, but the Secura Electric Coffee and Spice Grinder earned the best overall spot for a few reasons. One of the biggest is that it has two separate milling bowls: One for grinding dry ingredients and the other for chopping wet ingredients. The bowls also have measurement markings on the inside, so you can easily add what you need without using separate measuring spoons. This grinder includes a clear plastic cover that sits on top of the stainless steel bowl to keep ground ingredients from flying out as the blades spin. The stainless steel grinding bowl is removable and comes with a storage lid, so if you need to store spices, you can pop the lid on and put it right into your pantry. However, unlike the KitchenAid, the Krups only comes with one grinding bowl, so you won’t be able to grind new spices while you’re storing any.

Many spice grinders are also advertised as coffee grinders, but make sure the manufacturer explicitly states that it is suitable for that use. Some grinders are specifically designed only for spices and might not deliver the ideal grind for coffee. A few models on this list come with multiple bowls that can be swapped out for coffee, spices, and/or wet ingredients, like fresh herbs, onions, and garlic. You’re not limited to just salt and pepper, though. You can fill the chambers with any dried herbs or spices that are a staple in your kitchen for easy access to fresh grinding.Electric spice grinders typically work by using a spinning blade to pulverize whole spices and herbs into powder. Manual grinders use a ceramic or metal (usually carbon or stainless steel) mechanism to crush spices, salt, and pepper to the desired grind. Although there aren’t any programmed settings that allow you to control grind size, the grinder comes with a clear lid that allows you to see what you’re doing so you can stop grinding when your spices reach the desired fineness.

The Shardor Coffee and Spice Grinder was expertly designed to be the perfect multitasking tool. It comes with two stainless steel bowls. The first is a two-blade grinder bowl that handles dry items, like spices and coffee beans. The other is a four-blade chopper bowl that can wet-grind garlic and herbs, like basil, eliminating the need for manual mincing as you cook.Lifting the lid releases a visible twine of vapour, the unfolding presence of aromatic oils; you feel yourself an alchemist, if not a demigod. In addition to blasphemous urges, the machine supplies two grinding bowls with airtight lids, doubling as storage. Good for coffee beans or extra spice mix. (I no longer store mine in unlabelled baggies, sniffed at indiscriminately, a hapless dealer high on his own asafoetida.) It’s brilliant at wet rubs and pastes, too – messing chilli, garlic and galangal with fish sauce takes no time. And the dishwashable brushed metal doesn’t taint or transfer smells.

Our tester found this model to work best with spices (vs. dried herbs) and required at least a tablespoon of each ingredient to get a proper grind. Since the bowl is removable, it's easy to get every last granule of ground spice out with a few taps. It comes with a coffee spoon that has a brush on its handle to help whisk away any residual dust or powder. The manufacturer recommends hand washing the lid and bowls and advises against placing them in the dishwasher. KitchenAid Blade Coffee and Spice Grinder: This comes equipped with two bowls with different blades, one for spices with a winged blade and one for coffee with a straight blade. The one for coffee performed poorly, leaving lots of large and unevenly processed cumin seeds. The spice bowl performs better, but only slightly. It's slow to grind, has an uneven grind, low capacity, and the opaque lid makes it difficult to see inside the bowl to monitor the grinding process. The spice bowl performed better with 20 grams of spices than with 10, but it can't do much more than that, resulting in a limited sweet spot where it grinds well. Spice gets under the removable cup, where the ridged surface makes it difficult to clean. The Secura also brings power in a compact, counter-friendly size. The 200-watt motor can easily handle most spices as well as larger items like nuts and coffee beans, while the built-in overheat protection extends its lifespan so you can keep it around for a while.Proctor Silex Fresh Grind Coffee Grinder: The button on this model is hard to press down. Combined with a low capacity—20 grams of cinnamon maxes it out—and spillage upon opening, this unit didn’t make the cut. It does, however, have the best visibility while blending, so it’s a good choice if you like to watch your spices whirl. Lindsay Boyers is a certified holistic nutritionist with extensive nutrition knowledge and cooking experience. She’s developed over 1,000 original recipes and is constantly on a mission to find the best kitchen gadgets, at the best prices, to help make life in the kitchen more streamlined and efficient. The two-blade grinding bowl is meant for handling dried ingredients from herbs, like rosemary and thyme, to spices, like peppercorns and cardamom. Our tester noted that it created a fairly consistent, fine grind on most spices and worked beautifully to create enough freshly ground pepper for cacio e pepe in about 10 seconds. She noted that lightweight herbs like mint had a hard time staying down near the blade, so the results were less even, but these types of herbs generally don't need a super consistent grind.

Quiseen One Touch Electric Coffee Grinder: This grinder's feet fell off immediately upon unboxing. There is cord storage, but it's difficult to use. Its design is similar to the Bodum, with nice grippy sides but an unstable base. The blade placement is very low, resulting in spices getting trapped beneath, and it is difficult to clean out. This unit has the shallowest lid and the most spilling of all the ones we tested.

If you don’t need the power of an electric grinder, but you still want an easy and effective way to add freshly ground spices to your dishes, the Kuhn Rikon Ratchet Grinder is one of the most user-friendly manual spice grinders on the market. This Swiss-designed model has a door on the front of its body that you can open and use to easily fill the spice chamber with one dried spice or a combination to create your own spice blend.