Granite Grinder – an extinct gadget

I found these photos which I took during this year Chinese New Year.

giling2

This is the granite grinder that was used to turn rice into batter, i.e. a mixture of powdered grains and water. This unit belongs to my family and I had spent many happy childhood moments helping my mother to grind rice to make Chinese New Year goodies and other delicious kuehs.

In those days, there aren’t rice flour available. So, we have to soak rice or glutinous rice overnight and then, put them into these gadget to grind them.

giling

I have tried to add some labels to the above photo and hope some of you whom had never seen this, can roughly guess how it works.

I can tell you that it is hard labour to work on this as the granite block weighs a ton. Has anyone ever used it before, I wonder.

8 Replies to “Granite Grinder – an extinct gadget”

  1. LOL I actually have one here in Canada. It belonged to my great grandmother. Since no one was interested I shipped it here. Some nosy neighbour intercepted it and took the batu giling and the beautiful charcoal brass iron. ( Ayah, gong ah ( stupid) send garbage overseas.. give me lah and save her shipping fees.) GRRRRRRRR. She sold to a antique store!!!

  2. This are the three important tools in a Peranakan kitchen

    1: Lesong – Motar and Pestle
    2: Batu Giling – Grinder, This is the flat stone with a cylindrical stone.
    3: Batu Boh – The Mill, as pictured use for all the kuehs….

  3. babe – that belongs to my sis now.

    wuching – glad i am not the only one using it. LOL

    lmtd – Ya, we had the batu giling too. But now I only use the lesong but prefer blender.

    romantic – LOL, you actually shipped that? Wow, freight charges must be damn expensive!

  4. GRIN..it was worth it to preserve part of our culture. I got the lesong too..it actually makes the sambal/paste taste better than blending. My mum swears by it for grinding black sesame seeds. I saw a huge one at a Hawaiian museum.

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