How DO you get those spices out of your coffee mill?

It’s an age-old question: How to clean fresh ground cloves completely out of your coffee mill. You may not want clove-flavored coffee. Or you may not want the reverse: Coffee-flavored cloves. As a partial solution, we keep a coffee mill dedicated to coffee and one dedicated to spices. It is a partial solution because what if you do not want clove-flavored dill seed?

This hack works fairly well and is certainly the best solution I have found: white rice. After you grind up your cloves and before you want to grind your dill seed, grind white rice in your mill. The rice helps absorb the flavors and oils of the cloves, leaving it ready for your dill seed.

It’s simple:

1. Add white rice to your mill
2. Grind the rice
3. Toss the rice
4. Give the mill a once-over with a paper towel

You may still have some spice residue lingering, but you will find it far cleaner than it would have been had you spent five minutes wiping it. Score!