The Problem Aldi Shoppers Have With Its Stonemill Pepper Grinder

When savvy shoppers search for a solid pepper grinder, they need to keep an eye out for several variables. According to The New York Times, a good pepper mill should easily and evenly grind peppercorns at multiple degrees of fineness and potentially come with a warranty. Clearly, those factors ask a bit too much from the plastic pepper grinders you see at the grocery store, which can produce pretty uneven flakes of pepper — if they even work at all.

One Redditor discovered this tough fact of life the hard way when they began to grind some pepper from a mill they had purchased at Aldi. They created a post titled, "Stonemill pepper grinder catastrophic failure" on an Aldi-related Reddit thread, sharing a picture of a completely spilled plastic pepper grinder over what appears to be an uncooked pizza. The post has already accumulated more than 200 upvotes, with many fellow Redditors chiming in with their thoughts on the situation.

User @steelcatfish's peppery Reddit post is flooded with comments about other shoppers' similar gripes. Based on the picture, we can only guess that the original poster had attempted to grind their Aldi pepper onto their pizza, only to have the grinder fall apart right onto the pie. "This has happened to me multiple times with the stonemill salt and pepper grinders, most recently last week with my Himalayan pink salt grinder," wrote one Aldi customer, adding that the broken salt grinder had fallen into their homemade sauce. Another commiserated, "Yup it's happened to me enough times that I now grind into a dish first. I need to get some real mills and just fill 'em too."

Some comments suggest that the poor quality of these Stonemill grinders is intentional. "This is on purpose. They don't want people refilling the Aldi ones because over time they will grind plastic into your food. This is why I stopped buying them and just buy in bulk," one shopper said. A different user added, "The reason why they are marked DO NOT REUSE and that cap is put on there so tightly is so you have to buy another one; grossly overspending for the amount of pepper that is actually in that thing." Despite the kitchen disaster, other Redditors took a more lighthearted approach to their comments, calling the accidental dish "pizza au poivre." If you end up purchasing one of these pepper grinders from Aldi, just use it with a careful hand.