In Africa, the mortar and pestle is more than just a kitchen appliance; it is a symbol deeply intertwined with tradition, culture, and identity. From West Africa to Nigeria, this simple tool has played a crucial role in food preparation and cultural practices for centuries.
Mortar and pestles have been used since ancient times to prepare ingredients by crushing and grinding them into a fine paste or powder.
How to Use a Mortar and Pestle
A classic mortar and pestle set.
A Symbol of Tradition and Identity
The mortar and pestle is considered sacred in many African countries. For a Senegalese girl, this object is connected to tradition, culture, and identity because it is a common tool used in households to prepare cooking ingredients. It is used all the time when cooking to grind condiments.
Even though blenders are available in developed countries, many still stick to their roots by using the pestle and mortar. Everywhere in Africa, the sound of this object lets people know that cooking has begun.
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Traditional Methods of Milling Food in Nigeria
In Nigeria, there are two traditional methods of milling food items: the grinding stone and the mortar/pestle. The former is usually fashioned from hard stones or rocks, including volcanic rocks, most of which contain dangerous traces of elements such as arsenic and mercuric iodide.
To use the grinding stone, one has to kneel or bend forward, holding the upper millstone with both hands and work it forward and backward in the hollow of the grinding stone. When food items such as tomatoes are milled on these stones, some of it is equally ground to powder and washed into the food items and consumed. Continuous ingestion and accumulation of these substances in the body, could have been the cause of mysterious illnesses and deaths in many African families in the past.
Now that the mortar/pestle has become quite a popular method to mill food in Nigeria, it also came with plenty of significance and myths.
Significance and Myths in South Eastern Nigeria
In South Eastern Nigeria (Igbo speaking people of Nigeria), the mortar and pestle (Known as ‘odo/Ikwe/okwa( where Okwa is the smaller version of the mortar) na’ aka or nwa odo’. Simply meaning the mortar and it’s hand or child) is an integral part of traditional wedding gifts given to a bride by her family.
There are various taboos associated with the mortar and pestle:
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- It is a taboo to eat fufu i.e.
- It is a taboo to walk across a pestle on the floor as it could cause infertility.
- If you are pounding palm fruits and an elder enters the kitchen or compound from where you are pounding, you are expected to stop pounding in the mortar and start pounding on the floor or ground as a sign of respect.
- It is a taboo to pound in the mortar at night as it calls the spirits.
- When traveling with a mortar and a pestle, you must put a coin in the mortar to prevent the car from running into an accident.
Just like the knife plays a very vital role in the kitchen, the mortar/pestle plays a major and essential role in the Nigerian kitchen.
Types of Mortars and Pestles
These days there are various types of mortars/pestles and using it requires no real technic. The wooden ones are very much still in existence. And over the years different companies have come up with the marble and ceramic type. There are even those made and treated with granite.
The ceramic and wooden types are subject to stains; however, the wooden versions are more porous and tend to retain the flavor of different spices which is both good and bad in the sense that, it flavors the food items and bad when you are able to taste the clove you milled yesterday in the pounded yam you milled today :). The granite version, though treated could also leave it’s particles in your milled food items.
Even with the myths, the mortar is like an Oba (king) in the kitchen. There is a Nigerian saying which goes as thus;”Oba no dey go transfer” Meaning the king never leaves his throne.
Global Use and Variations
A mortar and pestle is a set of two simple tools used to prepare ingredients or substances by crushing and grinding them into a fine paste or powder in the kitchen, laboratory, and pharmacy. The mortar is characteristically a bowl, typically made of hardwood, metal, ceramic, or hard stone such as granite. The pestle is a blunt, club-shaped object.
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Mortars and pestles have been used in cooking since the Stone Age; today they are typically associated with the pharmacy profession due to their historical use in preparing medicines. They are used in chemistry settings for pulverizing small amounts of chemicals; in arts and cosmetics for pulverizing pigments, binders, and other substances; in ceramics for making grog; in masonry and other types of construction requiring pulverized materials.
A key advantage of the mortar is that it presents a deeper bowl for confining the material to be ground without the waste and spillage that occur with flat grinding stones. Another advantage is that the mortar can be made large enough for a person to stand upright and adjacent to it and use the combined strength of their upper body and the force of gravity for better stamping. Large mortars allow some individuals with several pestles to stamp the material faster and more efficiently.
Mortars and pestles were invented in the Stone Age when humans found that processing food and various other materials by grinding and crushing into smaller particles allowed for improved use and various advantages. Hard grains could be cooked and digested more easily if ground first, grinding potsherds into grog would vastly improve fired clay, and larger objects such as blocks of salt would be much easier to handle and use.
Stone mortars and pestles have also been used by the Kebaran culture (the Levant with Sinai) from 22000 to 18000 BC to crush grains and other plant material. Another Stone Age example is the rock mortars in the Raqefet Cave in Israel, which are natural cavities in the cave floors, used by Late Natufians around 10000 BC to grind cereals for brewing beer in the cavities.
Since the 14th century, bronze mortars became more popular than stone ones, especially for use in alchemy and early chemistry. Bronze mortars would become more elaborate than stone ones, had the advantage to be harder, and were easily cast with handles, knobs for handling, and spouts for easier pouring. However, the big disadvantage was that bronze would react with acids and other chemicals and corrode easily.
In various Asian mythologies and folklores, there is a common theme of a Moon rabbit, making use of a mortar and pestle to process the ingredients for the Elixir of life (or rice for making mochi).
Mortars and pestles were traditionally used in pharmacies to crush various ingredients before preparing an extemporaneous prescription. For pharmaceutical use, the mortar and the head of the pestle are usually made of porcelain, while the handle of the pestle is made of wood. This is known as a Wedgwood mortar and pestle and originated in 1759.
Mortars are also used in cooking to prepare wet or oily ingredients such as guacamole, hummus, and pesto (which derives its name from the pestle pounding), as well as grinding spices into powder.
The molcajete, a version used by pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican cultures including the Aztec and Maya, stretching back several thousand years, is made of basalt and is used widely in Mexican cooking. Other Native American nations use mortars carved into the bedrock to grind acorns and other nuts.
In Japan, very large mortars are used with wooden mallets to prepare mochi. A regular-sized Japanese mortar and pestle are called a suribachi and surikogi, respectively.
Granite mortars and pestles are used in Southeast Asia, as well as Pakistan and India. In India, it is used extensively to make spice mixtures for various delicacies as well as day-to-day dishes.
In Indonesia mortar is known as Cobek or Tjobek and pestle is known as Ulekan or Oelekan. The chobek is shaped like a deep saucer or plate. The ulekan is either pistol-shaped or ovoid. It is often used to make fresh sambal, a spicy chili condiment, hence the sambal ulek/oelek denotes its process using pestle.
A wooden mortar and pestle was discovered at Briar's plantation in South Carolina. It was found in the rice loft and presumably used for dehulling. Large mortars and pestles are still commonly used in developing countries to husk and dehull grain.
In the Philippines, mortar and pestles are specifically associated with de-husking rice. A notable traditional mortar and pestle is the boat-shaped bangkang pinawa or bangkang pangpinawa, literally "boat (bangka) for unpolished rice", usually carved from a block of molave or other hardwood. It is pounded by two or three people.
Large wooden mortars and pestles have been used to hull grain in West Africa for centuries. When enslaved Africans were brought to the Americas, they brought this technology-and knowledge of how to use it-with them. During the Middle Passage, some slave ships carried un-hulled rice, and enslaved African women were tasked with using mortars and pestles to prepare it for consumption.
Materials and Maintenance
Good mortar and pestle-making materials must be hard enough to crush the substance rather than be worn away by it. They cannot be too brittle either, or they will break during the pounding and grinding. The material should also be cohesive so that small bits of the mortar or pestle do not mix in with the ingredients.
In food preparation, a rough or absorbent material may cause the strong flavor of a past ingredient to be tasted in food prepared later. Also, the food particles left in the mortar and on the pestle may support the growth of microorganisms.
Rough ceramic mortar and pestle sets can be used to reduce substances to very fine powders, but stain easily and are brittle. Porcelain mortars are sometimes conditioned for use by grinding some sand to give them a rougher surface which helps to reduce the particle size. Glass mortars and pestles are fragile, but stain-resistant and suitable for use with liquids.
Other materials used include stone, often marble or agate, wood (which is highly absorbent), bamboo, iron, steel, brass, and basalt.
Uncooked rice is sometimes ground in mortars to clean them. This process must be repeated until the rice comes out completely white. Some stones, such as molcajete, need to be seasoned first before use.
Since the results obtained with hand grinding are not easily reproducible, most laboratories use automatic mortar grinders.
The Mortar and Pestle in West African Tradition
In West African tradition, the mortar represented the strength of the family. In the Bambara tradition of Mali, a newlywed young bride had to sit four times in a row on a mortar. It was believed that the bride subjected to this rite would never divorce.
The sound of the mortar should never be heard at night unless there is a funeral. Mortar and pestles come in all sizes, and the pounding is often cadenced to accompany a song.
Table of Mortar and Pestle Uses Across Cultures
| Culture | Material | Primary Use | Additional Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senegal | Mango Tree Wood | Grinding condiments | Symbol of tradition and identity |
| Nigeria (Igbo) | Wood | Milling food | Integral part of traditional wedding gifts |
| Mexico (Aztec and Maya) | Basalt (Molcajete) | Preparing ingredients like guacamole | Traditional cooking tool |
| Japan | Ceramic (Suribachi) | Preparing mochi | Culinary tradition |
| Southeast Asia | Granite | Making spice mixtures | Essential kitchen tool |
| Philippines | Molave or Hardwood (Bangkang Pinawa) | De-husking rice | Traditional farming practice |
African women pounding fufu
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