Peppermill (Crazy Greg’s Product Review)

So, a few days ago my lovely acrylic and stainless steel peppermill fell from the shelf above the sink and dropped all of 18 inches into the sink. I didn’t think much of it, put it back in its place and went about my business. Imagine my horror when I next tried to use it only to discover that the grinding mechanism had broken free from the body and it was beyond repair.

Anyway… I did some research and according to Cook’s Illustrated (From America’s Test Kitchen) and Alton Brown (who has never led me astray in the past) Unicorn’s Magnum Plus is the absolute zenith of peppermill functionality.

I was somewhat non-plussed by its appearance (a big black plastic cylinder… I was hoping for something in stainless steel or copper), but it has a lifetime guarantee, and according to the experts it excels at what it does.

So, I went ahead and got it and let me tell you, this thing rocks! The coarse/fineness is infinitely (and easily) adjustable, it holds scads of peppercorns, and it cranks out an insane amount of pepper per twist.

One of my other concerns was that due to its design, you can’t do the old “remove the top and attach the cordless drill” trick (à la Alton Brown), but as it turns out, it grinds so much more efficiently than any mill I’ve used before I can’t imagine this ever being necessary (quite unlike my recently departed peppermill, which ground so slowly that I frequently resorted to this technique).

So, if you are in the market for a peppermill, or you’re just tired of cranking endlessly to deliver the appropriate dose of pepper; the Magnum Plus gets ‘Crazy Greg’s Seal of Approval’.