My first attempt at Sausage Making

[JZ]

Real nice job on the sausages and now you are hooked.

The northern tool link to a grinder looks just like the one Princess Auto sells in Canada. I went to buy one about 2 months ago and the local store didn't have any and said they weren't getting any in for the foreseeable future. So I reluctantly bought the only other one they had. It was also a Kitchener brand but was a smaller neck size, only 250W and the price was $49.95 (a month later they were on sale for $35). For this price I didn't expect much and I have used it to grind about 50lbs of meat so far and it's ok (what I expected for the price). It works way better than what you described with the manual grinder. Sometimes I have to push pretty hard to get the meat to go down the tube and I am sure that is when the strands of whatever that crap is get caught up in the cutter. I can hear the motor bog down when I do that but it seems to clear things up most of the time. I think I have only taken the cutting head apart twice to clean the crap off of the cutter. Usually just forcing it seems to work. It certainly is important to keep the meat as cold as possible and partly frozen is the best.

I think the Kitchen Aid grinder would be better just because the motor is more powerful but will have to bow to those that have used one.

[Beery Visigoth]

The Kitchen Aid grinder works well for small batches - 5 to 10 lbs. Works great if meat is cut into strips and is partially frozen. DO NOT bother with the sausage stuffing attachment. Completly useless.

[pikeman_95]

Sailors grinder is a good entry level grinder. If you do large batches like 100#+ you will overheat it but for most hobby sausage makers it is a good buy. I use to work with a friend that had one short finger from a old hand grinder like yours. His brother gave it a good crank while he was stuffing a chunk of meat into the neck. You will find the grinders like they sell at Cabalas or Bass Pro are all stainless and have much better auger to case tolerances. They will process the meat through the grinder with out mushing the meat by back feeding the meat around the auger. 

[pmmpete]

If an electric grinder costs more than you are currently willing to budget for sausage-related fun, and you already have a Kitchenaid mixer, the Kitchenaid grinder attachment is fairly cheap, and would be a big improvement over your hand grinder.  My first grinder was the Kitchenaid attachment, and I put a lot of game meat through it. They grind pretty slowly, and you'll develop tennis elbow from cramming meat into it, but it will be much faster and easier to use than your hand grinder. And you'll be able to find out how much you use a grinder. 

The Kitchenaid attachments are made out of plastic, and eventually mine cracked.  I was processing 2-3 animals a year, and it lasted a number of years, so I'm not complaining.  I replaced it with a small electric grinder.  I wasn't satisfied with the performance of the grinder, so I sold it and bought a medium sized grinder.  It's pretty fast, but now I wish I'd splurged and bought a bigger grinder.  If I find an opportunity to sell my medium sized grinder, I'll unload it and buy a big grinder.  As with a lot of things, bigger is better.

If you already have a Kitchenaid mixer, I suggest that you try the grinder attachment.  If you don't already have a mixer, I suggest that you invest the money in a modestly priced electric grinder.

[watchdog56]

Nice looking sausage. I went with a small grinder from Gander mountain and found it does a good job grinding. You will get a small amount of fat at the end of your grind that wraps around the blade but nothing to worry about. As far as using it as a stuffer it sucked. I went and bought an LEM 5# stuffer and saved TONS of time.Well worth the money.

[Stickbowcrafter]

Nice job, looks great. Get copies of the books "Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing" and "Charcuterie" if you don't already have them. Invaluable resources for the sausage maker of any level.

-Brian