Martha Stewart's Trick For Perfectly Cleaning Your Coffee Grinder

Making coffee at home is one of life's simple pleasures, especially grinding the beans yourself, and filling your home with that beautiful coffee aroma. Likewise, grinding your spices at home is a fantastic move; that fresh nutmeg will both taste and smell better than ever. Only, if you're using the same grinder for spices and coffee beans, you probably don't want your morning cup of joe to taste like a peppercorn. 

So how are you supposed to clean out your grinder well enough between using it for each of these purposes? Getting up in there with your hands is tricky at the best of times; there are always going to be edges and surfaces you can't reach. Luckily, Martha Stewart has a trick for taking care of the grinder that doesn't involve any hands-on cleaning: Bread. Seriously, if you grind bread in your grinder, it'll clean it right out. Isn't the universe a remarkable place?

It's always fun to find ways to save yourself time and effort in the kitchen, and this coffee grinder cleaning tip from Martha Stewart is a really good example. It's as simple as adding bread to your grinder and letting it run; that's it. That's the whole process. The only further explanation would be to use soft, squishy white bread since it's more sponge-like, or stale bread also works.

The reason this works is twofold: first, the abrasion of the bread on the blades cleans them — but the bread is soft enough that it won't damage or scratch them. Second, the starch in bread has the effect of wicking up any oils and odors leftover from either coffee or spices as the bread absorbs everything that's in there. It doesn't have to be bread, either; the process also works with uncooked rice.

Just another gem in a long line of Stewart's cooking tips. Now if only she could teach us how to become best pals with Snoop Dogg.

Even if you aren't alternating between grinding coffee and spices, it's recommended to clean your coffee grinder every two weeks. This is because the residual oils from the coffee beans build up and coat the grinder, and they eventually turn rancid. This will give your coffee a bad taste. So, while Martha Stewart's bread hack is certainly the most time and labor-efficient method for cleaning your coffee grinder, if you have no bread on hand, you may need to do it the harder way. Cleaning it by hand.

To do this start by unplugging the grinder. Take the coffee grinder apart (as much as possible) and clean all the parts by hand. Get the little particulates off of the blade and lids with a small damp cloth (microfiber is great for this), then do the same with the base. Be very, very careful using water on the last part; since the base houses electrical components. Let everything fully dry before the next use.