I have just started making sausage. I purchased an inexpensive electric meat grinder manufactured by Nesco. I am not planning to make a bunch of sausage so I did not want to spend much, but the grinder just doesn't work very well. The grinding plate gets clogged up frequently making a simple grinding of 5 lab of pork into a long ordeal. Maybe that is just a problem with meat grinders in general. I know, I know, you get what you pay for, but I am not planning to make sausage every week and I am not making 20 lbs at a time so I hate to spend a bunch for a large grinder. Does anyone have a particular meat grinder you use that you can recommend?
I would just buy ground pork at the grocery store but they are such high fat I hate to use them, and I have tried to get a grocery store to grind some pork for me so I know how much fat is going into it and the cut of meat, but it seems as though they primarily grind beef and don't want to clean the machine after grinding pork.
Anyway, I would sure like a suggestion on a meat grinder that won't cost and arm and a leg.
I am not sure about the grinders plugging up. I just bought a hand cranker. I figure till I know more about it I can use the hand one for now. I will likely only do 10lbs at a time till I figure it out. You may ask the grocery store guy may be willing to grind for you if you ask him to do it just before he cleans his machines at the end of the day. You may get a little of whatever he has ground in it but it won't hurt anything. But it would be nice to do your own at home when you want. Well someone will be along soon to give you a proper answer. We have some real good suasage guru's here.
Several things could be the cause of you plugging up. Are you cutting your meat in about 1 inch cubes and then freezing it until it is pretty firm? This will help the grinder to grind the meat and fat and push it out the plate. If you are using a fine grind plate you might be clogging if you are not freezing the meat where it is cutting instead of mushing. You can also go up to a 3/8 inch or medium plate. I make links using the 3/8 inch plate and like the texture much better than using the fine plate.
I have the smallest LEM, 5 pound capacity. It works great. Just cut the meat in strips and the grinder sucks them in. No need for cubes. Saves some time.
It is very important that the meat is VERY cold; half frozen. Otherwise the fat can jam up any grinder.
Very good suggestions, thank you for your responses. I have not had the meat frozen or partially frozen. It just mushes up and then one end of a sinew fiber seems to go out one hole in the grinding plate and the other end out another hole. By the time you go through some meat, the holes seem to be clogged. I will try partially freezing and I bet it will solve the problem. Thanks.
I think the guys have you covered, most important is to have the meat 1/2 frozen, I'll grind thru the coarse plate first then the medium plate before stuffing.
I had to turn my blade around in my electric, I thought I was doing it right but wasn't
Sharp flat side of the blade rests against the plate.
I dont freeze the meat, i freeze the machine ;D
A cheap re freezeable sports wrap. This keep the auger cold so the meat dont get hot.
(http://i868.photobucket.com/albums/ab242/nepas1/DSCF7444.jpg)
NePas;
Thats a good idea.
I had the problem with mushing and sinew wrapped around the blade when I last made fresh sausage, a friend mentioned I should have done a better job of trimming the meat. Does freezing the meat partially alleviate this problem or should I be trimming all silver skin and sinew?
Removing as much silverskin and sinew as you can prior to grinding is your best bet to get rid of the build up. Cleaning the blade/plate between grinds is also a good thing to do. Mushing can be due to the meat being too warm.
Yup
What Kevin said.
I have had great success with the basic electric grinder #12 from Northern Industrial. comes with 3 plates, reverse switch, very easy to clean and durable.
For small batches you cant beat the basic $99 Cabelas grinder.
http://www.cabelas.com/catalog/browse/home-cabin-food-processing-food-grinders/_/N-1101293/Ns-CATEGORY_SEQ_104364180
QuoteNePas;
Thats a good idea.
Yea he comes up with a good idea every now and then. ;) ;D
I got my LEM 5 pound grinder from http://meatprocessingproducts.com/electric-meat-grinders.html. Use coupon code MPP2010 at checkout and get 10 bucks off.
It works really well. As others have said, make the meat is about half-frozen. I cut the meat into strips and just drop them into the chute; no pusher required. They just get sucked in. I'm very pleased with it.
Follow Kevin's and NePaSmoker advice - trim meats very well. You can throw all those tough trimmings into a small food processor and emulsify them. It also depends on what kind of sausage texture you are after.
I've got a 1/2 hp L.E.M. and it grinds meat with no problem. Triming the meat clear of sinew and silver skin is important. I grind with a coarse blade first and then use a finer blade and it still gets stuff stuck in it. Every thing in the grinder has to be sharp. Originally I thought on the blade could be sharpened. I learned that the plate can be sharpened too. Each hole should have a clean sharp edge. That has to be left to professionals with the right equipment.
Quote from: RAF128 on October 07, 2010, 01:44:56 PM
I've got a 1/2 hp L.E.M. and it grinds meat with no problem. Triming the meat clear of sinew and silver skin is important. I grind with a coarse blade first and then use a finer blade and it still gets stuff stuck in it. Every thing in the grinder has to be sharp. Originally I thought on the blade could be sharpened. I learned that the plate can be sharpened too. Each hole should have a clean sharp edge. That has to be left to professionals with the right equipment.
I aint never heard of the plate being sharpened? ..................................
Quote from: NePaSmoKer on October 07, 2010, 02:09:34 PM
I aint never heard of the plate being sharpened? ..................................
Me either. It can be flipped until it gets kinda dull on both sides. Sharpening the plate would probably require a precision surface grinder taking about 0.005 inches off each side. It's probably less expensive just to get a new plate.
you can lap the disc by using a straight tempered glass plate and lapping compound.. cover glass 6"-8" square area. put the cutting side down, making figure 8's in different directions. this will eventually make the cutting surface so cose to being perfectly straight and if the blades are straight, it will cut like a dream. As for blades you need to take them to a butcher supply shop, and see who they know will shappen.
Years ago I took my plates to a machine shop at the local university. I know the fellow that runs the shop. They build anything and everything the Engineer design. He looked at the plates and said they're dull. They had a special machine and he laid them on the bed and the machine did the rest. I don't want to guess what and how much he took off each side. I took the plates home, put them in an old grinder and it worked to beat the band. I have a neighbor who was a butcher before he retired and had is own store. He told me there are few place that can sharpen them and it's quicker to buy new ones but he too had it done.
Well
I'm glad i do all my own sharpening then ;D
I've been grinding meats for years and have a #22 electric grinder (1100 watts /1 phase) from "The Sausage Maker" and have found very few animals that it has problems with. A lot of my buds tried to do grinding-on-the-cheap and usually pay for it a significant increase in pregrinding labor.
There are some issues that small grinders impart to grinding:
First is heat. Since it is a small motor it will labor harder to generate enough grinding force, that is transmitted up the shaft to the grinding unit. With a suitably sized unit, the meat will process so quickly that heat will not build up in the motor and not be transmitted to the grinder and therefore to the meat. We never have to partially freeze meat or use sports wraps, simply take it out of the refer and grind (or grind/stuff simultaneously) and return to refer.
Second, a lot of the secondary work is not necessary. Surgical grade trimming is replaced with a quick pass through the meat looking for bone, veins, large chunks of fat, etc. There is no need to double grind (coarse / fine). Piece size is not critical, if it'll fit into the feed tube, it'll grind it.
Third, we have process many hundreds of pounds of meat through this grinder over the years and the cutters/plates are as sharp as the day they came out of the box. Butcher told me that if the pressure of the meat on the grinding assembly is right, then the unit becomes almost self-sharpening. Anyway, never heard of having to sharpen cutters and plates.
Of course that is just my opinion, I could be wrong.
I firmly believe that this (like the Bradley) is something that you not go cheap on. Get the right tool for the job from the get-go, you will be happy that you did.
I have been using one of those #22's for a while now, goes through 100lbs of meat in 15min
Good (German) sharp plates are hard to beat, simply amazing the crap that LEM sends along as the standard plates.
Use what comes with the cabelas until you figure out that your going to keep doing this, then either upgrade the machine or order a good set of plates.
My uncle use to be a butcher, he said that they would get like 4 sets of plates for their grinder and send them out in sets of 2 when they got dull.
Sharpening the plate is called "lapping". Any machine shop has a lapping table and will do it for you quite reasonably. If you do both the knife and the plate, you will have the face of the plate mated with the cutting edges of the knife for superior performance.