Last weekend when making YumSugar's lamb [1] — which was to die for! — my dad and I ran into a little problem. After toasting the cardamom seeds, the recipe asked you to grind them in a spice grinder. Yum used her mortar and pestle, but our mortar was missing! How on earth were we supposed to grind spices without a spice-grinding machine or a mortar and pestle? The solution is super simple, something that you can do at home! To find out what we did, .

Most kitchens have a black-peppercorn hand grinder. We removed the black peppercorns and filled the grinder with toasted cardamom seeds. To ensure that the spices end up in the grinder pour them into a small measuring cup. Next grind the seeds onto the lamb as you would black pepper. This technique can be used with other seeds or spice blends.