Meat Grinder Buying Guide

If you are a person who loves to prepare and cook your own food, a meat grinder is something you might want to consider. With your own meat grinder, you control the ingredients and the amount of fats, salts, and other additives, which is very good if you are on a strict diet. Chunky sandwich spreads, savory appetizers, hearty soups, homemade sausages, and other meat dishes are easy to make with the help of these machines. There are two types of meat grinders: manual grinders and electric grinders.

Manual meat grinders are intended for processing relatively small quantities. They are built to be clamped to a counter or table and hand-cranked to grind 2 to 3 pounds of meat per minute. They usually include several cutting plates that rotate against a cutting knife to produce small (3/16 inch) or large (½ inch) bits of ground foods. The food to be cut, which may be turkey, chicken, duck, pork, beef, veal, venison, or vegetables, is hand fed into the funnel formed on top of the grinder body and driven by a spiral auger into the cutting blade as it feeds the materials through the cutting plates.

Electric meat grinders are more complex in design, but similar in function. They are equipped with 2 or 3 different sized cutting plates, such as 3/16, ¼, and ½ inch. In addition, the grinder may have a food pushing tool and an assortment of sausage extrusion tubes that assist with the flow of the ground sausage into the various types of casings. Most grinders will have operational functions for reversing the motor if meat jams in the grinder. With most electric models, you must remove the knife and plate to clear clogs. Electric meat grinders will produce higher volumes of food with a minimal amount of effort.

Every meat grinder will typically get jammed at some point; this is why many meat grinders now offer a Reverse Function. Reverse Functions reverse the motor in order to help clear up any jam.

Most people use a meat grinder at some point to make sausage. This is why most meat grinders come with a Sausage attachment, or Sausage Stuffer. Sausage attachments are basically a long funnel that help guide the meat into various casing types.