Sometimes, when you don’t have the right utensils or appliances in your kitchen, you have to get creative. For instance, it turns out it’s possible to make whipped cream in a blender rather than a stand mixer, and your Microplane can replace your cheese grater. Now, a so-called hack circulating on social media is proposing that an immersion blender can double as a spice grinder.

Baker Stefani Pollack and her husband tested out the trick by flipping their blender upside down, putting sesame seeds into the shallow basin and sealing the top with plastic wrap. The result was uniform ground seeds. It looks promising, but is this method as effective as it seems? We consulted three of our test kitchen recipe developers to find out.

At a glance, the trick seems like it could be handy.

“When I first saw the videos of people using their immersion blenders as spice grinders, I was surprised and impressed!” lead developer Amanda Neal says.

However, all three staffers have concerns.

First and foremost, the method is dangerous. Immersion blenders aren’t designed to be used upside down, so the pieces may not fit together the way they should. Do you really want to point the blades toward you and hope for the best?

Second, the plastic wrap is a problem. Cookbook author and digital creator Dzung Lewis found that the blades cut through a single layer and sent her spices flying, creating a mess in her kitchen.

“It broke through. It literally shot into my face,” she says.

Worse, our test kitchen experts worry that you’ll end up with bits of plastic wrap in your food.

“Using plastic wrap to enclose the blender feels like you are only asking to get plastic wrap in your mix,” developer Emily Weinberger says. “I’m really just turned off by the plastic wrap and this method in general, and I do not recommend people to try it.”

“I agree that I would be so fearful of getting plastic in my food,” developer Khalil Hymore adds. “As recent news reports have discussed the high amounts of microplastics in our foods, we probably shouldn’t be dangling plastic wrap so close to a blade like that.”

On the other hand, plastic wrap may be the only way to keep spices close enough to the blades for them to be ground. Dzung found that swapping out plastic wrap for a sturdier Ziploc bag leaves too much room for coffee beans to avoid the blades, which doesn’t work.

Plastic aside, this method may still be ineffective. Immersion blenders are designed for pureeing sauces, smoothing out soups and emulsifying dressings, not chopping or grinding. The blades are sharp but small, which means they won’t be able to cut through large, hard spices like cardamom pods, star anise or cinnamon sticks very well. The sesame seeds in the Pollacks’ video worked decently because they’re soft, but Khalil points out that the grounds don’t pour smoothly from the blender in the end.

Since results of this “hack” are decent at best, and dangerous at worst, none of the developers we consulted advise trying this technique at home. You’re much better off buying a spice grinder, which you can find for under $20. Alternatively, you can buy a mortar and pestle in the same price range. Or, if you’re really in a pinch, Khalil says you can even lay your spices on a cutting board and use the backside of a heavy skillet to coarsely “grind” them.

While it would be nice to find another use for your appliances, they’re usually designed for a specific purpose. This immersion blender hack just isn’t worth the trouble.

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