>>1119291If you only have a small amount, you can use a mortar and pestle. The larger the better. Use granite, not porcelain. You can do a pre-grind by using a corn mill. That will reduce a lot of work if you have a lot of pepper. That will grind up seeds too. An electric coffee grinder also works well for a pre-grind, but will get pretty hot if you have a lot of stuff. Even though their grind is course, they also tend to produce a secondary fine powder that will emanate from the cracks for the coffee grinder and choke you too death like a pepper-laced smoke bomb. You can prevent this by doing it outside and by taping over all the cracks and seams on the entire device. A corn mill/grain mill will not have that problem. A mortar and pestle will cause a bit of this fine powder to float through the air, just not as bad as a coffee grinder.
If you use a coffee grinder or a corn/grain mill, the pepper will need to be absolutely cracker crisp. Otherwise, it will cause problems with the devices. This doesn't happen with the mortar and pestle, but it will make it more difficult to grind up quickly. Regardless, a pre-grind is best when you have tons of stuff to go through. I normally do a pre-grind for bulk storage using my corn mill. Then when I need enough to fill a shaker, I'll grind it to fine powder using the mortar and pestle. I keep the bulk stuff in glass canning jars, vacuum sealed, and in the freezer. I let the jar warm up to room temp before opening it to prevent moisture condensation on the powder.
In this image, I'm using a #2 Universal Food Chopper to crush the pepper to normal "crushed pepper" size. Then I use the corn mill to grind everything to a much finer size. It gets stored in those jars then ground to a powder, using the mortar and pestle, when I need powder. The Food Chopper does well for making it pizza seasoning size.
