You Can't Have a Pepper Cannon; You'll Shoot Your Eye Out

Is this thing for real? You'll find out when you can pry it from my cold, dead hands.

As a nutrition professional and food writer, I often receive sample snacks and gadgets to taste or try out. I’ve had Oreo wine and Figgy Pudding Spam. I’ve tried storing avocados in water for weeks, making eggnog out of ranch dressing, and milking potatoes. 

None of this could prepare me for the Viking-adjacent majesty of my latest test subject: The Männkitchen Pepper Cannon. It comes in a box that cosplays as Darth Vader on weekends.

Using 92% of my remaining good karma, I received this behemoth from the manufacturer for review. Designed in the year 2278 by the ghost of Chuck Norris, and sent back to the present day when a mutant intern accidentally put it in the post-apocalyptic research facility’s office microwave, the Pepper Cannon is a finely-machined instrument of destruction. It weighs in at over 1 pound, 3 ounces and has a burr grinder with an axe to grind, in that you literally could grind an axe with it. It can also spin straw into gold and grind your bones to make its bread. 

When it gazes into the Magic Mirror, the evil queen flees the kingdom in disgrace. My, what big teeth it has.

Pictured below are all 75 of the Pepper Cannon’s grind positions, from finer than the most ethereal dusting of powdered porcelain, to a prolific cascade of cracked pepper coarse enough to choke one of those worms from Tremors. Each individual setting is smarter than your honor student.

The Pepper Cannon once shot a man just to watch him die, and freely admits to targeting both the sheriff and the deputy, with malice aforethought.

The Pepper Cannon’s first foray into experimental jazz composition won Best of Breed in the 2023 Westminster Dog Show, Sporting category.

Legend has it that Bartholomew “Black Bart” Roberts owed his seafaring prowess to keeping two Pepper Cannons slung across his shoulders, and a third under his pillow to stave off usurpers. Mutineers who pressed their luck are said to have been drawn and peppered. 

After a grassroots write-in campaign, the Pepper Cannon is currently serving its third term as the mayor of West Palm Beach, Florida. It ran on a platform of property tax reduction and the expansion of the restorative justice program. 

When you grind your peppercorns at the finest grade, angels weep, because there is so much pepper in their eyes. With the coarsest setting, the Devil drops his golden fiddle at your feet and slinks off on the first Greyhound out of Georgia. 

If you turn the dial more than one full rotation, someone in New Zealand sneezes the first two measures of “Six Months in a Leaky Boat” by Split Enz. 

The Pepper Cannon rides in single file to hide its numbers.

It’s a little-known fact that Napoleon’s death was due to acute peppercorn deficiency, after his Pepper Cannon was confiscated by the British during his St. Helena exile. Visitors to the island say that if you listen carefully late at night, under a full moon, you can still hear the Little Corporal crying as he is forced to down a whole plate of Chicken Marengo, unseasoned.

The Pepper Cannon won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Being Rad. 

President Richard Nixon forbade visitors to the White House from bringing black pepper on the premises, believing it to be a provocative and thinly veiled Communist affront to polite society. Secret government files allege the notorious 18 minutes of missing sound in the Watergate Tapes resulted from his personal secretary accidentally tripping the "erase" pedal in her haste to hide her personal Pepper Cannon from Nixon’s wrath.

The Pepper Cannon knows where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. Did it pull the trigger? Maybe.

In the unlikely event of a water landing, the Pepper Cannon can be used as a flotation device.*

The Pepper Cannon often wears its white replacement peppercorn chamber release button after Labor Day in defiance of conventional fashion guidelines. Want to make something of it? Fine. It’ll wear the red one to your funeral.

Isn’t $199 too much for a pepper grinder? No. How dare you. In fact, you should have to pay another $199 just for the privilege of knowing it will cost you $199 to own one. 

I keep finding myself staying up late, finding excuses to walk past its special cubby on the kitchen counter, and making things like Cacio e Pepe, or Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic and 2 Metric Tons of Cracked Black Pepper. My mouth burned for 30 minutes after dinner this evening. 

Although the manufacturers claim that the name means “My Kitchen” in Old Norse, it really means “Made for a männ, strong enough for a woman.” I’d consider leaving my husband for it, but I’d have to beat him to it. 

*Under no circumstances should you use the Pepper Cannon as a flotation device.