William Bounds Chrome Electrix Pepper Mill: Manly Yes, But I Like It Too!
Written: Dec 24 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: fresh ground pepper!
Cons: lightweight housing, fingerprint magnet
The Bottom Line: Consider the pros and cons of this particular model, versus the upgrade, before you buy.
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| pluckyduck's Full Review: William Bounds Chrome Electrix Pepper Mill (9-in.) |
There’s nothing sexier than a man in the kitchen. I guess there was a time in my life when I defined sexy in terms that included washboard abs or piercing blue eyes, but in my space of life right now, a manly man roasting a roast, cooking up a pot of steaming clam chowder or sautéing green beans really flips my switch. It’s even better when the Chef in Charge is my man.
He can cook
In the years we’ve been together, Don has taken over most of the cooking. This was a particularly weird transition for me because I’ve loved to cook since I was young. I still love to cook but, truth be told, nobody in the house seems to like what I enjoy cooking. I like weird flavors and exotic combinations and recipes that are pulled out of cookbooks like Tantalizing Thai. Aside from a killer meatloaf, most of my American fare measures up way short of what my man can do when let loose in the kitchen. One thing and another, and Don’s become the main cook in the family.
I can shop
An efficiently run corporation or family assigns jobs according to ability. Grudgingly agreed that Don is the best choice for cook in our family, I still hold the title of Queen of Procurement. It’s my job to research and buy any of the equipment that our family chef might desire. Anybody who follows anything I write knows I take my shopping seriously, but you haven’t seen seriously until it comes to me and small appliances. If I don’t come up with the best product at the best price, I hear about it in spades from the family chef. He’s not nearly as sexy when he’s grouching about a bad buy.
We need a pepper mill!
I’m honestly not sure why it took so long for it to occur to Don and me that we needed a good pepper mill. One morning a few months ago, Don was out with his best friend Pete the Boilermaker, and they were discussing cooking, of all things. (Pete’s the chef in his house, as well, all 6’ 4” 250 pounds of him.) Pete was appalled to hear that Don wasn’t using fresh ground pepper. “Dude! You can’t use that pepper s**t that comes out of a can! You gotta get the peppercorns and grind them fresh every time...and use good peppercorns, for ch***t sake!”
Shaken to be found inadequate in the pepper category, Don requested I come up with a good pepper mill, post haste. An electric pepper mill, for more power, since Pete the Boilermaker was only using a manual one. Preferably a pepper mill that was bigger than Petey’s.
All pepper mills are not equal
Research led me, rather quickly, to William Bounds as the brand in pepper mills. If you are a kitchen gadget/small appliance lover like I am, spending a few minutes on http://www.wmboundsltd.com might turn into a few hours.
The Bounds pedigree:
Our company was started in 1964 by William Bounds, a renowned inventor who wanted a better pepper mill. He patented an innovative 3-step adjusting ring and milling mechanism. The 3-step adjusting ring, on the LTD collection, removes the guesswork often associated with a pepper mill, as the setting you choose remains the same each and every time you use the mill. The William Bounds milling mechanism works in a way that crushes rather than grinds the peppercorns. Because of this unique design-where metal is not grinding metal, as with other competitive grinders-William Bounds has not had to replace a single mill due to wear in its 36-year history. (source, wmboundsltd.com)
I’m no mechanical genius, but the description of the Bounds pepper mill mechanism sounded very similar to a burr grinder for coffee, which crushes instead of grinds. We’ve been very happy with the results of our burr coffee grinder for years now; I decided to go with the Bounds mechanism for our pepper as well.
Selecting the right model
After sifting through the available Bounds electric models, I settled on the Chrome Electrix Pepper Mill (9-in.) , which sells for about $40. I lusted after the stainless steel model, but the retail price of $65 rounded up too easily to $100 in my brain. Seemed excessive, even for us, for some pepper. The features of both models are the same, the difference is in the housing.
Features
9" high, 2" diameter
Push Button operation
This is really cool. You can grind your pepper one handed!
Non-corrosive advanced ceramic mechanism
Um, I like ceramics. If it’s touted as a selling point, it must be important, right?
Fine/Coarse adjustable grinding mechanism
Just like our coffee grinder, we had to play with this a bit until we got the setting we prefer. Since we like the flavor of the pepper, we’ve settled on a coarser setting.
Headlight!
The light is the single coolest feature of the pepper mill. It shoots a beam of light across the food when you grind, letting you see exactly how much pepper you’re applying. Warning: children love to play with this light and may go through lots of pepper until they are bored with it.
Uses 4 "AA" Batteries
Haven’t had to replace the batteries yet, and we’ve ground a lot of pepper in the months that we’ve had the mill.
What I like
Pete the Boilermaker was right. We were idiots to not be using fresh ground pepper before now. Turns out, pepper is like coffee. After using fresh ground, I can never go back to pre-ground again.
This mill itself is so easy and so convenient, we find ourselves reaching for the pepper constantly. Since pepper is good and salt is bad, using more pepper has health benefits as well.
The pepper mill, it should be mentioned, is beautiful. The design is certainly manly (cough), but a girl who finds a cooking chef sexy doesn’t mind such a manly shape in her kitchen or her hands. Don is pleased that his pepper mill is much more manly than Pete’s, so everybody is happy.
What I don’t like
I wish I had bought the $65 stainless steel model.
The housing of this mill is light, much lighter than I expected. Essentially, they’ve taken their $65 model, housed it in some kind of plastic, and covered it in chrome. Grinding the pepper is a very tactile experience and it would be more pleasurable if there were more heft to the model.
My biggest beef is fingerprints. The chrome is a fingerprint magnet. The only way to keep it as shiny and beautiful as it should be is to constantly clean the fingerprints off of the casing. Since that’s not likely to happen in our house, the mill is covered with fingerprints 98.4% of the time. Something that gets as much use as this pepper mill does needs to be more maintenance free.
The $65 stainless steel model wouldn’t have picked up fingerprints anywhere near as readily. I should have spent the extra money. (Who knew we’d enjoy a pepper mill so much?)
Overall Recommendation
I heartily recommend William Bounds for your pepper and spice mill needs! If you choose an electric pepper mill, I don’t believe you can go wrong with the mechanism of the model I’m reviewing today. I urge you though, to consider both weight and the dreaded fingerprints when choosing which Bounds mill to buy.
Nothing less than 4 stars for this fine pepper mill, but we would have been happier with the more expensive model.
I bought my pepper mill at TableTools.com, through Epinions’ compare prices feature. TableTools has an excellent selection of William Bounds’ collection. I recommend them, with a good deal of caution, in my review of the store here:
http://www.epinions.com/content_74746138244
Recommended:
Yes
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pluckyduck
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Member: Andrea Barton Gurney
Location: Almost Philadelphia
Reviews written: 74
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Gone fishing for awhile.
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