Meat Grinders

1. Foremost on the list of reasons to buy and use a meat grinder is that you do not know the origin of prepackaged ground meat. Some grocers and brands may combine meat from different animals, which dramatically increases the chance of containing food borne pathogens. Other risks include improper cleaning of the grinder.

2. But safety isn't the only reason. Grinding meat for hamburgers, sausages, and other recipes can be fun and interesting. If you derive satisfaction from doing a job yourself, then your meat grinder is going to get used frequently.

3. While meat grinding can be a messy procedure, with the right tools and a little practice, it makes less mess than baking a cake or, sometimes, eating a hamburger. That is, if you make your hamburgers with fixins the bun can't handle.

4. Any meat grinder can also be used to process nuts, bread, and vegetables for a variety of uses that will really open up your culinary repertoire.

5. A common difficulty with meat grinders is getting the last of the meat out of the grinder. Because the meat you are putting in it pushes the meat through, there is often a little bit stuck inside. To solve this, simply stuff white bread into the grinder to push it out.

6. The meat grinder you choose should be selected according to your expected use. This seems obvious, but many don't realize that small grinders cannot tackle large jobs in a reasonable amount of time. If you're a hunter and want to process a deer, for example, you'd be better off with something bigger than a #8, which is recommended for regular home meat processing. For really frequent grinder use, we'd recommend an electric meat grinder over a manual meat grinder.

7. To properly make sausage, you need to run the meat through twice. First grind the meat with your preferred ratio of fat and meat, then mix it with your spices and additions and run it through with no grinding plate and the sausage stuffer. Otherwise, what makes your sausage special will not be evenly distributed.

8. More and more, people are choosing electric meat grinders for their ease of use and convenience. However, if it's something you want around the house, but you never plan on grinding large amounts, a hand grinder is fine.

9. The basic components of a meat grinder are the hopper, worm screw or auger, and grinding plates. Usually it will come with some sort of accessory to facilitate feeding the meat through the hopper. And many meat grinders include a sausage stuffing attachment.

10. As you gain experience, you'll want to browse through a host of meat grinder accessories and attachments. Different grinding plates, meat grinder knives, and sausage stuffers all make the job go quicker and easier.