Meat Grinder

This post kind of sounds like the title to a bad horror movie or maybe the name of a WWE wrestler, but it is actually about grinding meat, which may or may not be more exciting to you than pro wrestling. Grinding my own meat has been on my culinary bucket list for quite some time now, so when I got a meat grinding attachment for our Kitchen Aid from Holli's mom all my grinding dreams came true.

As soon as I opened the box I went online to get some tips from the pros. From what I gathered the key to perfect ground meat is to ensure everything stays cold. If the meat is not cold enough it will start to get stringy and gooey. So with that I got to work. I made one batch before this post to make sure I got it right and I didn't want to be distracted by taking pictures.

I was making burgers so I wanted to get a high fat meat, but you can easily get a leaner meat. You could do a sirloin or even grind up some chicken or turkey. But for my purposes I went with the fattiest chuck roast I could find.

The next step is cutting your meat into small cubes. You want it to be able to slide down the tube.

Remember when I said you want everything really cold? Well the best way to get that is by spreading the meat on a cookie sheet and sticking it in the freezer for about half an hour so it is partially frozen. You don't want it all the way frozen because it will be too hard to grind up. One really good tip I read online is to take apart the meat grinder and put the parts in the freezer with the meat. If you have a metal mixing bowl throw the parts in there so when you are grinding you can use the cold bowl to catch the meat.

Don't forget to remember how everything goes back together, because you are going to want to put it together quickly before the parts warm up. I made this mistake and put it together incorrectly and the meat wasn't grinding well. I had to wash the parts and freeze them again.

Before I took everything out of the freezer I filled a large metal bowl with ice so I could put my smaller bowl on top of it to ensure the meat stayed cold. I know it's a lot of work and you don't have to go to the extent that I did to keep stuff cold, but I would rather be safe than sorry.

Now you have everything put together take a few seconds to look at the sheer beauty of the machine!

Look at that! It's like looking down the barrel of a gun...a meat dispensing gun!


OK enough gawking. Time to get down to business.

Turn your mixer on to 4 or 5 and put the meat in the hole. Take the plunger...or pusher down thingy...whatever you want to call it and press down.

If it looks like this you are on the right track. The whole thing goes rather quickly once you have everything prepped. It looks beautiful doesn't it?

Your final product should look like this. As soon as you are done put it in the fridge until you are ready to use it, or put it in freezer bags and into the freezer. I doubt many of you will go out and buy a meat grinder, but hopefully you found this interesting, or at least enjoyed looking at the pictures I took of the process.