the tale of two grinders

grumpyoldman

grumpyoldman

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several years ago when we first decided to start making sausage , we needed a meat grinder and not wanting to spend a lot of money just to try our hand at something new i found a meat grinder at "harbor freight" for $69.00
it was a small home use grinder and it worked really well, but after grinding several 100 lbs of meat with it and deciding we would indeed be making much more sausage every year , i decided it was time to invest in a much larger grinder so i did my research and settled on a 3/4 HP grinder
when it arrived i unpacked it and decided to see what this big boy could do , as soon as i dropped the 1st peice of meat into it . the dang thing stalled , i took the grinding head off thinking i must have installed the blade backwards,
nope that wasn't it,
so over the course of the next several hours i tried everything i could think of to get it to grind meat without stalling ...nothing worked . i called the company and told them what was happening , several pnone converastions later they sent me another one .......same problem!!!
the $69.00 grinder would and still does grind circles around the $500.00 grinder ......make of this what you will , just know that just because something costs a lot more doesen't always mean its better !
 
We have an LEM grinder and stuffer. Both together were less than $500 when we bought them. The stuffer is a hand crank. We've never had a problem with either.
 
i thought it might be a run capacitor but there was only one and i tested it and it was ok
i also checked the running amps and that turned out ok also . i'm still scratching my head trying to figure out why it stalls.
medtran: i stopped using hand crank stuffers years ago , i found out that water stuffers are waaay easier and faster
 
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SandwichShortOfAPicnic said:
The Kitchen Aid grinder and stuffer always caught my eye. Has good reviews I think?
Click to expand...

I have one. The metal one is the one to get. The plastic one is not durable -- mine cracked. I replaced it with the metal one. The other nice thing about metal, is that you can put the grinder in the freezer and get it ice cold, and you get a better grind.

Now, I don't grind massive amounts of meat. If I need a custom grind (that the grocery store doesn't stock), I grind what I need, and that's all. The KA grinder attachment does do a quality grind, but if you run it all day, your'e going to burn up your mixer.

CD
 
sandwich: make no mistake!!! a grinder, ANY grinder makes a mighty poor stuffer
Kitchenaid makes a great mixer, on one will ever question that
but i will not try to stuff more than1 to 2 lbs at most on any mixer/grinder or even grinder with a stuffer attachment
they will work your tail off trying to stuff even small amounts
if your going to stuff sausage casings buy a dedicated stuffer you will be glad you did
i have used the hand cranked ones and while they do far better than any of the attachments
none of them work as easy or as fast as a water stuffer ,
the water stuffer can stuff sausage casings as fast as you want or as slow as you need it to
we have been using a water stuffer for quite sometime now and can stuff 10 lbs of sausage in about 2 minutes ( but we are very used to it )
a water stuffer is effortless , the speed is controled by opening and closing a hand valve
and just so you know, we stuff about 300 lbs of sausage a year!!!
 
grumpyoldman said:
sandwich: make no mistake!!! a grinder, ANY grinder makes a mighty poor stuffer
Kitchenaid makes a great mixer, on one will ever question that
but i will not try to stuff more than1 to 2 lbs at most on any mixer/grinder or even grinder with a stuffer attachment
they will work your tail off trying to stuff even small amounts
if your going to stuff sausage casings buy a dedicated stuffer you will be glad you did
i have used the hand cranked ones and while they do far better than any of the attachments
none of them work as easy or as fast as a water stuffer ,
the water stuffer can stuff sausage casings as fast as you want or as slow as you need it to
we have been using a water stuffer for quite sometime now and can stuff 10 lbs of sausage in about 2 minutes ( but we are very used to it )
a water stuffer is effortless , the speed is controled by opening and closing a hand valve
and just so you know, we stuff about 300 lbs of sausage a year!!!
Click to expand...
I don’t know what a water stuffer is?
 
caseydog said:
I have one. The metal one is the one to get. The plastic one is not durable -- mine cracked. I replaced it with the metal one. The other nice thing about metal, is that you can put the grinder in the freezer and get it ice cold, and you get a better grind.

Now, I don't grind massive amounts of meat. If I need a custom grind (that the grocery store doesn't stock), I grind what I need, and that's all. The KA grinder attachment does do a quality grind, but if you run it all day, your'e going to burn up your mixer.

CD
Click to expand...
I had a meat slicer that was similar. If you used it for more than 2 kilos of meat it would start to burn out. If I get one I would go for the metal job.

At the moment I’m still weighing up my next purchase of a sous vide so it’ll have to get in the queue behind that 😆
 
this is a water stuffer , thesausage casings go on the white tube and a water hose connects to a valve on the other end (black ) there are 2 valves , one inlet and one discharge valve( i use a short hose to drain the discharge water into a 5 gal bucket )

20210417_094512_2.jpg
 
SandwichShortOfAPicnic said:
The Kitchen Aid grinder and stuffer always caught my eye. Has good reviews I think?
Click to expand...
There's a reason we bought the LEMs. The KA is fine for very small amounts, but once you hit over 2 or 3 pounds, it heats up and is way slow. Before we bought the LEMs, making andouille was a most of the day thing. We'd make 15-20 pounds. With the LEMs, it's around 3 hours.
 
medtran49 said:
We have an LEM grinder and stuffer. Both together were less than $500 when we bought them. The stuffer is a hand crank. We've never had a problem with either.
Click to expand...
I got the same and esp that stuffer made a huge difference after having tried grinding and stuffing with a hand cranked grinder with stuffing attachment. For that, you should be an octopus as you definitely need more than 2 arms.
I can operate the LEM stuffed by myself with no issues.

Which reminds me: I should make sausages again but I suppose I better wait till winter. Far too hot here now at above 40 oC
 
now getting back to the grinders , i wish i could figure out whats wrong with it , its just a big paper weight as far as we are concerned
 
By stalled are you saying nothing comes out? If that's it, something is installed wrong, especially given that you've had the same problem with 2 machines. Did you read the instructions or just assume you put it together correctly? I'm not being snotty with the instruction question, just going by experience with most of the men I know. Also, if you are trying for a small grind with little holes in the die, you might want to try a larger holed die for a bigger grind and then go smaller.

Also, not knowing the brand you have, have you googled problems with it? Before we got the LEM grinder, I had googled to see if anyone had found a way to make things go faster. I found there were after market blades that were shaped a bit differently that did a better and slightly faster job than the KA blades, but it was still slow going.
 
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