How to grind corn, beans and stuff without a grinder.

Happy 2025 folks! How's everyone? I wanna find out how can we grind corn and stuff without a grinder. I've grinded corn by using a blender and it came out ok, but a few kernels remain. Which tools are better for grinding besides grinders? Please shoot me back if you need me. Take care!

Metate and mano, also called mortar and pestle.

What's up man! Where I get the stuff from? Never even heard of them before. Most corn grinders out there are expensive. How much are they?

Blake Lenoir wrote:What's up man! Where I get the stuff from? Never even heard of them before. Most corn grinders out there are expensive. How much are they?

Tap on the links in Joseph's reply to go to the pages with photos and descriptions

I have a number of pestles in my collection of Indian relics. The coolest one is made of pink granite, which isn't naturally occurring in the Ohio Valley. I found it in the same place as some points made of black obsidian, also not natural in the valley. The archeology folks at IU said there are also sites in Colorado and other places even farther west, where artifacts made of our naturally occurring flint are found. Pre-Columbian Indians did not have horses, that's a long walk carrying rocks.  The rest of my pestles are made of a dark bluish/black stone, abundant along the river. They are not like those in the pictures from Mexico, rather they are bell shaped with a flare at the bottom.

I've never seen the mortar side of the apparatus; I'm not sure Indians here made them. In Spring Mill St. Park in Indiana and in the Red River Gorge in KY there are places, I won't say exactly where, with lots of circular and oblong depressions in rock outcroppings that the archeologists say were used for that. I guess you might have had your own pestle, but the process was maybe a communal affair just using an appropriate rock shelf. The one in the Red River Gorge is under a large rock overhang and dry all the time, the one in Indiana is out in the open beside a stream.  

I bought my mortar and pestle at Ikea. It was about $15 and it's great. Before that I had a smaller one I bought at a small Indian grocery store.

If you don't have one of those, a handheld coffee grinder works. Though obviously your batches will have to be tiny.

Our property out in far West Texas, has a cave.

Inside, I found a Metate Bowl.

When we sold our homestead I had to leave it behind.  I am sure the new owner of the property thought it was just a big rock.

Mine was much larger and more refined that this one:



Source

I've grinded corn in a smoothie blender and went ok, but there were few kernels remaining. How we protect our blenders from being overworked after trying hard to grain the corn into its soft state?

Corn can be hard on all machines, and flint corn especially. (Flour corn less so.) Flint corn is traditionally boiled with wood ash or slaked lime, and then rinsed—the process of nixtamalization—leaving the softer hominy, which is then ground into masa. It also makes the corn better tasting and more nourishing. I hope all of this helps!

I use a kitchen blender. Rarely get a kernel left over. The trick is to try different amounts of seed in the container to get an even grind. Too much and it won't grind it all. Too little and it will throw the seeds around without grinding them.

Here is what the pestles found around here look like, or at least all those I've seen look like this and are about the same size, just right to fit a hand. I remembered I do have what might be a mortar too, but not sure where it is right now. It is too small though to have been used with these. Is a very circular stone, very flat on both sides with a depression in the middle on both sides.

Sometimes I find hand-cranked meat grinders at thrift shops for cheap. They are designed to make hamburger. I would speculate that these would break corn and beans into small chips, which could be finished into flour by methods noted above. I would add a hopper and a low-speed electric drill. My 2c.

I haven't got much useful to add, but found a fascinating link on the history of quernstone evolution in Africa/Europe...

using a quernstone in ancient Egypt

Mills Archive Trust on Quernstones

Blake Lenoir wrote:I've grinded corn in a smoothie blender and went ok, but there were few kernels remaining. How we protect our blenders from being overworked after trying hard to grain the corn into its soft state?

I tried that with some chicory roots.  I too was concerned that I was overworking the blenders so I decided against that method.

We have several folks on the forum that used different methods to make flour.

Maybe one of these might help give you some ideas:

https://permies.com/t/180201/grain-flours

https://permies.com/t/1355/DIY-Grain-Mill-ideas

https://permies.com/t/170944/grind-grains

Blake Lenoir wrote:...how can we grind corn and stuff without a grinder[?]

It also might help if you explained what your opposition to a grinder is. People might be able to look at your problem sideways better.

I sort of freeze up at this question because if you have a tool that grinds stuff, you have a grinder. And if you don't then you can't grind...so I get sort of stuck. Maybe as part of the above, define what you mean by "grinder".

I mean blenders, mortar and pestle and that type of stuff to hammer corn, beans and stuff to flour to create mush, bread, soup and stuff for recipes, etc. Trying to make some better cornmeal, nachos, taco shells, all for greater taste. Is there some simple material to create mortar and pestle the way ancient people have?

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Sometimes I find hand-cranked meat grinders at thrift shops for cheap. They are designed to make hamburger. I would speculate that these would break corn and beans into small chips, which could be finished into flour by methods noted above..

I have seen from several different sources online that a meat grinder will make tolerably good masa, if run though in two passes (coarser, then finer).  But, I don't know about making dry corn meal with a meat grinder - I surely haven't tried.

I also haven't tried making masa yet.  I need to get some cal (food grade calcium hydroxide/quick lime).  Or, I could use wood ashes, too, to nixtamalize the corn.  I have several 5 gallon buckets of "deer corn" in the basement, waiting.  It's probably GMO and other stuff, but as an experiment may be OK, and was cheaply acquired at the end of deer season from our local grocery store - just field commodity corn, nothing special.

I have a raft of hand cranked grinders which have followed me home from the local thrift stores.  I've given away quite a few, but still have a bunch of them.  The most common use so far has been to mash/grind chick peas for hummus (or what passes for it in our house - my wife objects to tahini, so ours is tahini-free).  The immersion blender we have isn't up to the initial maceration, though is does pretty well at incorporating the garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and so forth after the garbanzos are already pretty well mushy.  Anyway, I am pretty sure that making masa with a meat grinder would work, based on the chick pea experience, though it might take a bit of monkeying around to find the right sequence of grind plates.

I myself am debating what hand grinder to obtain for making wheat and rye flour.  Whatever I get, I want to be able to grind corn meal, as well.  A grinder with interchangeable steel burrs and stones would be ideal, so both wet/oily and dry things can be ground.  My current setup is a Messerschmidt Jupiter/Family Grain Mill steel burr mill.  I am quite confident that a hard corn would bee too much for it, since hard winter wheat feels like it is pushing the limits.  So far, a KitchenAid ready Mockmill (which could have a hand-crank drive made up) or a hand crank Retsel are near the top of my list, but I can't claim that I have exhaustively investigated all possibilities.

Kevin Olson wrote:Anyway, I am pretty sure that making masa with a meat grinder would work, based on the chick pea experience, though it might take a bit of monkeying around to find the right sequence of grind plates.

I've made masa by using the meat grinder on our Kitchen-aid mixer (with the finest die) for a first pass and then running those crumbles through the Victoria hand mill. But we're not really satisfied with how fine it ends up so we usually just pass it through the Victoria twice and avoid getting the extra grinder dirty. If you're just making tamal or chochoyotes or maybe even sopes, it might do OK, but not for tortillas (with my equipment).

Blake Lenoir wrote: I mean blenders, mortar and pestle and that type of stuff to hammer corn, beans and stuff to flour to create mush, bread, soup and stuff for recipes, etc. Trying to make some better cornmeal, nachos, taco shells, all for greater taste. Is there some simple material to create mortar and pestle the way ancient people have?

If it's the quest for taste that's driving you, then definitely try nixtamalising some corn. It is a game changer in the way it softens the kernels, changes the flavour, improves the nutrient availability, and gives you something that you can process by hand with a range of utensils. All you need is some hydrated lime. It's sold as cal or pickling lime in a lot of places. If you can't get your hands on any, wood ash (especially from hardwoods) works but won't give you the same taste as lime...still good though.

Have a search for "dolly pots"  the sort used by prospectors and miners.
It's essentially the same as used by early peoples who weren't using the sort of grind stone pictured in Nancy Reading's post. These were made from hollowed out sections of trees, and used a straight-ish branch as the crusher. Works best if the "dolly" is long handled so there's no bending, and it produces a better thump than a short one.  I worked in a mineral testing lab and it's what we used to crush rocks - even basalt and quartzites.

I have used baking soda to nixtamalize corn.  I think you get better flavor with the lime.

Jill Dyer wrote:Have a search for "dolly pots"  the sort used by prospectors and miners.

A search found a metal version, but not the wood version. The Japanese use the wood version to make a traditional, very sticky, rice dish, although I believe it used a cooked rice, and it was 40+ years ago, so I can't remember the name of it.


webpage

To use it for grain instead of rocks, I think this could be a home-welding project.

Jay Angler wrote:
The Japanese use the wood version to make a traditional, very sticky, rice dish, although I believe it used a cooked rice, and it was 40+ years ago, so I can't remember the name of it

The sticky rice balls are mochi, my favourite is the traditional red bean paste ones.

The bowls can be wooden or stone, but both use a wooden mallet for the pounding.

Here's a couple of videos of the process -

Blake Lenoir wrote:Happy 2025 folks! How's everyone? I wanna find out how can we grind corn and stuff without a grinder. I've grinded corn by using a blender and it came out ok, but a few kernels remain. Which tools are better for grinding besides grinders? Please shoot me back if you need me. Take care!

At it's simplest, we need two things harder than the grain/corn and some sort of grinding motion.  

The cheapest and most common is to get two rocks and a human to move the rocks back and forth or up and down.  It's also the hardest on the humans and even just a year or so of doing this task leaves permanent damage to the bones.  It's also really boring.  So I'm guessing you don't want to start that way.  

A millstone (goes round and round) is a lot easier but not common where I live.  

Advancing from here in roughly order of price (depending on where you live of course)

Next cheapest is a trip to the second hand shop.  There are always grain grinders available for sale when I visit there.  A Food Chopper (looks like a meat grinder, but the blade goes on the outside) also can grind corn and there are usually two or three at any one shop because no one knows how to use these anymore.  I don't think anyone's made these since the 1940s in the US (1960s in Canada and the UK) and electricity became more common even in rural parts).

Also very common at the second hand shop are the kitchen aid attachments.  Sometimes they have kitchen aid standing mixers there too.

The next most expensive, I got my hand crank bean, corn, and grain grinder at walmart for $20 CAD.  

From there, the price jumps up considerably when we get to electric methods.  These are far easier on the human than the manual ones, but also more easy to get wrong.  Be careful with the word "corn" as it means "grain" in much of the English speaking world and using mais/corn in a grain/corn mill isn't a good idea.  

~

r ranson wrote:

At it's simplest, we need two things harder than the grain/corn and some sort of grinding motion.  

The cheapest and most common is to get two rocks and a human to move the rocks back and forth or up and down.  It's also the hardest on the humans and even just a year or so of doing this task leaves permanent damage to the bones.  

I bought this Indian grinding stone (ammi kallu) years ago.

Used it twice and it was not only hard work, was really rough on my hands.

Was likely poor technique too.

It now languishes on our tiny balcony and is purely decorative.

It is supposed to sit flat on the ground but I raised one end so water can drain away from under it.

If good matters more than cheap:

https://masienda.com/products/molcajete

Nancy Reading wrote:I haven't got much useful to add, but found a fascinating link on the history of quernstone evolution in Africa/Europe...

using a quernstone in ancient Egypt

Mills Archive Trust on Quernstones

I notice this ancient person is frowning, not smiling. That tells a story.  

Douglas Alpenstock wrote: I notice this ancient person is frowning, not smiling. That tells a story.  

In cultures that utilized slavery, grinding was a typical job expected of slaves.

There’s a thing called a corona mill.  It has two metal discs and the grain is ground between them.  The distance apart is adjustable.  I have one.  It’s decent at getting the job done, beans corn, milo, everything I have tried to grind has worked.  I wanted a photo so I could show you.  Just web search corona mill.  I don’t know if that is the brand or a generic word.

I know from historical accounts that Indians in my area did grow corn. A white woman, captured by Indians in Virgina in 1755 and brought to this immediate area described the most beautiful river she had ever seen, the Ohio, and the largest corn fields she had ever seen, growing in the valley beside it.

I wonder though if the pestles I have were used for grinding, due to the size it would have taken a very long time to grind more than a tiny amount. I wonder if instead they were used to crack hickory and walnuts, I've used them for that myself and they work great for it. I've also never seen anything indicating Indians here used corn in a similar way as they did in the southwest. I've heard of a dish made of dry corn and beans, but nothing made from ground corn flour.

I also don't know how long ago corn was introduced here, and the archeologists say 95% of my relic collection is more than 2000 years old.  Two places where I used to hunt account for all of my pieces less than 2000 years old. They are actual arrowheads, small, triangular and very finely worked. Pottery fragments, and bone tool fragments are found with the newer arrow points but the grinding stones, if that's what they are, came from spots where the other relics are closer to 5000 years old.

I think it may be a false assumption that Indians east of the Mississippi and especially north of the Ohio used corn in the same ways as those in the southwest and Mexico.

There are quite a few YouTube videos describing ways of making mills - rotary quern or elsewise.

Here's one from an Australian fellow, who pretty well built one from scratch - granite tiles, cut with an angle grinder held in a jig for the stones, with a wooden cabinet and an electric drive motor.



I'm not certain that I could exactly replicate his jig geometry from video and his description.

He shows a somewhat improved version, here:


JB of the "Good and Basic" YT channel made a concrete rotary quern:

He noted that the concrete wore away around the pieces of aggregate, which would probably lead to shortened teeth, and worse.  Probably not the recommended means, but interesting, nonetheless.

JB also discussed the relative merits of the mano and metate versus a rotary quern for wet processing nixtamalized corn in the Americas, and why rotary milling may not have really "caught on" in the Americas until Europeans began dry grinding cereals:


JB has lots of other fun stuff on his channel - everything from smelting bog iron to fiber arts experiments.

Blake Lenoir wrote:What's up man! Where I get the stuff from? Never even heard of them before. Most corn grinders out there are expensive. How much are they?

It depends....

I've seen a variety of sizes made of a variety of different materials, so price point varies greatly.  It also depends where you are and how commonly they may be used.  We do follow a fellow on YouTube in Spain who uses a mortar and pestle a lot, but he also spent part of his life in the USA.  

We now have two, although the most recently procured, larger one may not have seen any use yet.

There's a lot of great stuff in this thread.  Off topic, but I have the head of a stone hammer my father had picked up in a field he worked in central Saskatchewan.

I have a cheap hand grinder made from cast iron. I've only tried to grind corn in it. It looks like this one on Amazon.

I kept getting metal shavings in my ground corn. I did not consume any of it. The grinder is still around here somewhere taking up space.

That looks essentially the same as my corona mill.  Mine has metal plates, but when in use the two plates are not in contact with each other.  I have ground dried hawthorne berries, chaga that I first had to beat with a hammer to get small enough pieces for the grinder, other things too.  I don’t believe there would be any difficulties grinding nixtamalized wet corn.

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:I have a cheap hand grinder made from cast iron.

I kept getting metal shavings in my ground corn.

I was advised to grind uncooked rice on the grinding stone and repeat until the rice was no longer dirty.

That might work with your cast iron grinder?

After all the comments in this thread, I am inspired to use my grinding stone again to make my next curry paste!

Here's another mill build from a Virginian, very DIY, using some local field stone for the quern, and trimmings and drops from some trees in his yard milled up for the cabinet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8UyEbm3_gw

One thing which is quite evident in this video is that the two stones have the same "handed" grooves cut in them, and that the grooves are deepest near the center, and reduce in depth as they approach the periphery of the stones.  This was mentioned in the Australian video above, but is very visually obvious here.  Thus, when placed face-to-face, the grooves will direct the grains outward to the closer clearances (and finer grind), while shearing the grains.

The way he constructed this one, it could be converted to crank or treadle power fairly easily.

But, if your objective is solely to wet grind nixtamalized maize, this style won't likely serve you very well.

Here's an Asian mill, described as a noodle mill:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2lxXgpYv2Ws[/youtube]

I don't know much about this style of mill, though it clearly uses both a crushing and a sliding/shearing motion.  I wonder if something along these lines wouldn't work for grinding wet substances.

Or, this style, which I more typically associate with very old fashioned cider mills, when the track is in a full circle:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lTRe7p5-ezw

And a version of mano and metate, with a long, two-handed mano, from the Hadzabe of Tanzania:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KUesYUqMi6g

These all seem like they could be (dare I say) grist for the mill!