Using and Choosing a Mexican Mortar and Pestle
Knowing how a Mexican mortar and pestle (molcajete) is used will mean that you can become a discerning buyer. Of course, you may want one just for decoration in which case you can skip all this. Even many Mexican families have them on the kitchen counter as a reminder of bygone days, using the blender to prepare their sauces.
But if you are interested in using a molcajete, then perhaps the following considerations, gleaned from the molcajete makers themselves, from Mexican cooks, and from personal experience, will come in handy. Any comments, corrections, or additions welcome.
To begin with, describing the molcajete as a “mortar and pestle” is as generic as describing a frying pan as a cooking pot. Like cooking pot, which includes not only frying pans, but covered casseroles, sauce pans, stockpots, and so on, mortar and pestle includes very different tools for very different uses.* (I see another post coming up on the multiplicity of pestles and mortars).
For now, though, for most of us, the first mortar and pestle we encounter is likely to be the standard marble one, polished smooth inside and out. We are used to holding the pestle in our fist to pound spices or perhaps herbs. The motion is primarily an up and down smashing one.
You can use a molcajete for that. You can hold the pestle (tejolote) in your fist and pound. I do that for breaking up peppercorns, for example, and very efficient it is too.
But it’s not the major use of a molcajete in Mexico. There molcajetes are mainly used for preparing fairly small amounts of sauces (salsas).** The common, everyday sauces in Mexico are vegetable purees; their key ingredients are usually some combination of tomatoes (jitomates), tomatillos (tomates), and chiles.***
Now tomatoes, tomatillos and chiles all have thin, but tough skins.**** And you can bang away on those as long as you like and you are not going to break them up.
What will break up the skins of both red and green chiles, say, is grinding or shearing them laterally along a rough surface. So the fact that molcajetes are made of a rock with pores instead of smooth marble or granite is not an unfortunate accident. It’s a deliberate choice. Only in a few places is just the right rock available.
And you are going to use the tejolote to shear, not pound. Instead of holding the tejolote in your fist, put your palm over the upper end and hold the broad base with your fingers. Then using your wrist as a pivot you can twist the base, pushing the chile over the rough bottom or sides of the molcajete.*****
The photo below shows how the tejolote fits in the hand; the two middle fingers (invisible) almost reach the bottom. (Of course, I’m just showing it in a horizontal position because it was easier to photograph.)
Size of hand and of tejolote
Now you will understand what you are looking for.
Look for a tejolote that is long enough for your fingers to grab when you have the top in the palm of your hand. If the tejolote is very short, look for another molcajete.
Look for an interior that is rough to give purchase to the ingredients so that you can break them up. Costco is selling molcajetes made in China. They are the right shape but the wrong rock. It’s a rock, probably granite, that can be and has been smoothed out. That’s find for pounding, not good for Mexican sauces.
Look for a deep bowl to allow you to rotate the tejolote without spilling the salsa over the side. It’s quicker and easier to make a shallow bowl, so be wary of those.
Use your wrist to rotate
Look for a fairly narrow and even rim of about half to three quarters of an inch that you can grab for stability while you are grinding. It can be flat or rounded but should be well defined.
Look for one that is symmetrical and nicely finished. The legs should be the same length, evenly spaced, and the exterior and the interior should be as smooth as the porosity allows. Or put another way, the surface should be rough but not uneven since the latter impedes grinding (and makes it more impossible to cure the molcajete).
Here are photos of molcajetes from various parts of Mexico. As you can see they are all much of a size to nicely accomodate the twisting of of the hand. Little molcajetes are fine for a small amount of (say) a very piquant sauce. They are not much good for making enough sauce to feed a whole family or to use, say, to make enough salsa to cook a pork in salsa verde. Although the tejocotes vary in form they are all longer than they are wide and have a broad base for grinding.
Molcajetes. From top left. From San Lucas Evangelista near Guadalajuara; from Comonfort near Guanajuato; a gift from a friend in Mexico City, probably from near Puebla: Bought in Querétaro, probably from north of San Luis Potosí.
One more thing that you can’t see here. The rock from which they are made varies in porosity and hardness. The molcajete makers use the softer rock for toys and for their sons to practice on when they are learning. But of course it’s quicker and easier to make a molcajete from the softer, more porous basalt. So there is a temptation to pass these on to those who are not used to using this utensil. If you are unlucky enough to get one of those, it is going to be very difficult to cure.
In short, a molcajete is a very finely-crafted tool for very specific purposes. There’s nothing primitive about the design, even though the production may be artisanal. So choose carefully. Compare, for example, the one below with the photos and discussion above. The bowl is shallow, the rim ill-defined, and the tejolote short.
Molcajete (pestle and mortar) in Crate and Barrel, Austin, Texas
It’s too bad that so many sold in the US are not up to snuff. It’s easy to tell a story about why. Customers are not experts in their use. Stores need their markup. The molcajetes are heavy to transport. And the amount going to the makers is probably very small. I would love to know more about the middlemen such as Imusa.
When you have found a nice molcajete, you need to cure it (get rid of remaining rock fragments) before you use it. First take a stiff wire brush (perhaps even on an electric drill) and get rid of all the fine bits of rock. Then put in rice and grind in batches until it comes clean. If this doesn’t happen after a certain length of time, then you probably have a second rate molcajete.
*Thanks to Peter Herzmann for suggesting the cooking pot analogy. Do check out his very informative site and his Knife Skills.
** For excellent, accessible explanations of and recipes for Mexican sauces, see Truly Mexican by Roberto Santibañez.
*** Indigenous Mexican cuisine relies on grinding rather than cutting. Knives are used mainly for sauce bases that are of European origin. Thus all those Mexican recipes that start with chopping garlic, onion and tomato, or the pico de gallo sauce often thought of as a Mexican sauce north of the border, I suspect to come from the Spanish tradition in Mexican cooking.
****It’s true that in sophisticated Mexican cooking the skins of tomatoes and tomatillos are often removed after dry roasting but this is not usually done in the villages in my experience.
*****There are a lot of pretty bad you-tubes in English with supposed experts pecking away with the tejolote. This by Yuri Gotari in Spanish is better.
- What Is Nostalgia Good For? Quite a Bit, Research Shows – NYTimes.com
- Thoughts on Promoting Cuisine and Empire
I’d love to know where to find good molcajetes in Mexico City. The ones I’ve seen at Mercado de la Merced and Mercado Sonora look like they’re made out of concrete — and they don’t have enough of a rough surface, as you describe, to effectively shred the skin of the tomatoes, chiles, etc.
Also, do you know much about the chilmolera? I bought one in Oaxaca and haven’t used it because I’m scared the tejolete will break the clay bowl (despite the act of shearing, rather than pounding). I also don’t remember if the bowl needs curing, although I don’t think it does.
I think the one I bought may be the softer rock, it is still giving off grit after two passes with rice and a steel brush :(
Sounds quite likely to me, Carissa. Now that so many are bought simply as decorations, the temptation to take shortcuts must be pretty overwhelming.
Hi Leslie, I did reply to you, honest, but somehow it got lost. I have never looked for molcajetes in Mexico City so I don’t have a list of recommendations. My suspicion is that you could get a good one, probably from Puebla, in the Xochimilco market, though that really is a trek even if you live in the south of the city. I have seen street vendors selling them in the main plaza in Coyoacán and they might be good. I have heard horrible rumors about the concrete molcajetes and and metates at Merced and Sonora. They are to be avoided. I’ll be be back in Mexico for ten days in early October and see what I can scout.
I have a beautiful molcajete from when I was in Oaxaca. But yes, they are difficult to transport – I tried to bring it back in my carry-on luggage, but apparently the tejolote is considered a weapon to airport personnel (makes sense, it’s heavy enough to do some damage!). Fortunately we were able to mail it to ourselves :)
At a price, I bet.
Do you have a favorite source in DF for these? Super helpful post, I have been hesitant to get one for lack of knowledge.
dSee my response to Lesley, Carissa
I don’t think I can see your response to Lesley about DF sources?
Where can I find one in the Denver Colorado area?
Carolyn, I don’t know for sure. But I suspect that if they are in Crate and Barrel in Austin, they are in Crate and Barrel everywhere.
Thank you, I’ll try there.
There are so many names and types! Here in Yucatán the Mayas call the stone molcajete a “tamul” – which is where we get the name of our famous habanero hot sauce “chile tamulado.” Because the stone molcajetes were so heavy and difficult to transport (although they were historically brought here from Central Mexico, albeit in smallish quantities) there evolved a type of wooden molcajete as a substitute; it is made of an extremely durable tropical hardwood known as guayacan (Guaiacum officinale). This is the densest trade hardwood and has been a valued export crop to Europe since the 16th century. This special wooden tamul or molcajete is known in Mayan as a “k’uut” which is a verb meaning “to mash or smash” and also refers to the object. It is used mostly for chile salsas, like the ubiquitous “chile k’uut” or in Mayan “k’uut bi iik.”
Thanks for this, Daivd, and for the reminder that basalt molcajetes were not easy to come by in many parts of what is now Mexico. I have what I think is a k’uut. It’s hard, it’s gorgeous, but it’s incredibly smooth on the inside. What did they do with the tough chile skins? or were the non-tourist ones rough on the inside?
A lot of wooden products here were traditionally hewn, meaning that they likely had a coarse surface. But I doubt that the k’uut was possible (or likely) before wood lathe technology arrived. All those I have seen even in the remotest pueblos are smooth inside. This is just a guess (historians must hate that!) but I theorize that because our chiles are very different here they wouldn’t have been so pesky to break up. The dried chile pais is the chile used to make k’uut bi iik; because it is dried, the mashing action simply crumbles the chile before the juice is added. Similarly our chile habanero has a very thin and delicate skin, so after charring (the traditional method) it’s really easy to smash, especially if you sprinkle on coarse sea salt which naturally aids the decomposition. My point is that basically in Yucatecan cuisine, there are just two chiles that we use with any regularity, and those are easy to break down in the k’uut. If all else fails, they still do use metates, (ka’ in Mayan) which are often limestone here.
Two fascinating points. First, that the chiles used in Yucatan do not have the tough skins of the favorites of Central Mexico. Second, that the k’uut does not go back to mists of antiquity but is dependent on the lathe, hence post Conquest.
And interesting that limestone metates were used. I tried some limestone ones in Menorca, a world away I know. They worked well but the archaeological evidence suggested that they were frequently replaced, perhaps because they were relatively soft.
Oh, and historians love guesses, or at least this historian does. History is about theories (guesses for which there is as much evidence as possible), not about facts.
You’re right about their being frequently replaced. Interestingly, there is great scholarly debate about whether or not the Mayas consumed tortillas here because there is no archaeological evidence of comales. Some theorize that they used limestone slabs, but of course those would have deteriorated over time as you say. I suspect they still made tortillas, if perhaps a bit different than we are accustomed to, perhaps a bit thicker, and simply cooked them right in the hot coals just as many people still do in the pueblos.
I’d have thought limestone slabs heated enough to cook tortillas would have quickly disintegrated to lime. That aside, all this is reminding me of conversations I’ve had with Mexican archeologists about the thin tortilla not being that widespread in central Mexico. So much we don’t know. I’ll try to dig out my notes.
You are so full of yourself, and your tone is very dismissive and condescending. I have two molcajetes. One is from Crate and Barrel. It’s the one I like the most.
Well, James, I’m delighted that you found a good one at Crate and Barrel.
Great reply. Also, thank you for the article. It was very helpful. I had purchased a molcajete that was so soft no amount of seasoning could stop it from shedding dust. I think I may have found a good used one on eBay based on your article. I haven’t recieved it yet but I feel confident that it will be far better than the garbage one available in my area. Thanks
The kind of molcajete that sheds all the time can be quite dangerous. Glad eBay produced an alternative. And thanks for the nice remarks.
eBay was a bust (not once but twice) so now I ordered one from MexGrocer.com. Crossing my fingers since it has great reviews but this will be my third purchase so I’m not hopeful. Ug
Angela, so sorry that the eBay ones turned out to be a bust. I’d be interested to know how MexGrocer turns out.
Hola dear Rachel, Your post has inspired me, after three decades of living in Mexico City, to finally get a molcajete. I just tweeted @cmmayo1 the photo of my molcajete with the business card of the molcajete maker. It is made by Fernando Castro, Atizapan de Zaragoza, Estado de Mexco, tel 01 55 2602 8031. He and his family maintain a stand in the main part of Bazaar Sabado in San Angel with a good selection.
Thank you Catherine. I know the very stand and actually have a piece by them. I also have, I realize, a small book of posts on grinding, metateros, and the like. I shall have to draw on your expertise in self publishing to get this out. A tiny audience but it’s material that should be preserved.
Hi Rachel, one more detail to add. When I bought the molcajete he insisted that it did not need seasoning, it was ready to use. I tried grinding some rice, and it all came out clean, so indeed, it was ready to use.
About self-publishing. It’s a doozy of a question whether to self publish or not, especially when each work and each writer are so unique. I have published most of my works with university or small presses, and essays with literary magazines, and in most instances I think those were the best homes for my work. However, for example, I recently wrote a very long essay I was unwilling to cut, or willing to expand into a book, so I decided to publish the mega-enchilada as a “longform essay” on Kindle for $1. (I also hired my ex-University of Utah Press editor to get it into proper tip-top shape. A key step most self-publishers skip but should not.) And so not only is the long essay published to my satisfaction (yay) but in the long run probably more people will find it and actually read it. (It will also appear in a collection of essays, probably in 2019 or 2020). All of which is to say, I think your small book on grinding, metateros, etc, would make a good Kindle. And from there, if you want, you can do a print on demand (POD) paperback. Everything I have to say about the process is here:
On PODs
http://madammayo.blogspot.mx/2014/09/its-not-like-making-peanut-butter-and.html
On Kindles
http://madammayo.blogspot.mx/2014/03/how-i-published-my-kindles.html
Apart from considering the usual suspects (university and small presses etc) you might also consider taking such a book to a hybrid publisher. One I have not worked with but have been mightily impressed by is based in Austin. (I met them when I attended the Independent Book Publishers Association conference a couple of years ago.) If I were there in Austin with a project such as yours I might consider seeing looking into what they can do for you.
Greenleaf Book Group
http://www.greenleafbookgroup.com
Hope this helps.
P.S. I love your blog!
Thank you, thank you Catherine. So helpful.It may be that a small press would like it. I need time.
Yes, I have the impression that the Castros use electric tools to make their stone objects. At least the very smooth shapes suggest that. And so I suspect they use an electric wire brush (don’t know the technical name) to clean it up and get rid of grit. A very smart marketing device for modern buyers who are not at all thrilled at the thought of mucking around grinding several batches of rice. This should all fit with your old economics work on microloans, etc.
Hello, how do I contact him and does he still sell molcajetes?
I’m from Sweden and haven’t found any good ones.
Is imusa a good brand? I know you mentioned but I couldn’t tell if they are “good” or “bad” category.
Last time I checked, and this was several years ago, molcajetes continued to be made by hand. If Imusa sells them they are buying them from the makers and the quality of the molcajete depends on the care with which it was made, the quality of the rock, etc. Not mass production. Hope this helps.
I’m not sure I can help. Metates are so heavy they are more or less impossible to ship overseas. When I lived there I could never find anyone who would undertake the task.