Better Late than Never (or I really should have been grinding meat this whole time)

Before my kids were even born, I purchased an old meat grinder at a yard sale. I intended to clean it up and restore it to a good condition, but somehow never got around to it. Instead, it sat for over a decade in a box collecting dust as I moved from apartment to apartment. Last year, I happened across a cheap meat grinder (plastic 8 dollar model) and figured it was a low commitment of effort. Fast forward another half a year and I finally got around to using it. I picked up some meat from the store that was on sale due to the sell-by date being that day and realized it wasn't going to be large enough to serve by itself.

That was as good a time as any, so I broke out the little device, washed it well, then ground up the meat to use as an ingredient in that evening's dinner. This cheap, barely saleable, day away from off meat was transformed into some of the leanest and most delicious ground beef of my life. I was elated, but realized that I was almost certainly not going to do it again. Why? The cheap model gave what was paid for it. Cleanup was a misery and the fats (despite not having been heated up while in the grinder) were sticking to the plastic. Worse, the grind plate clung to the bits and pieces because the blades had been sub-par. I got it washed and packed up, and moved on. My wife, however, had other plans.

She knew about the old grinder, but knew that our current kitchen setup doesn't allow for it to be properly attached to a counter. Her solution was to surprise me with the purchase of a grinder attachment for our kitchen aid. It arrived a few weeks ago and today was the first chance I had to properly use it. It grinds quickly, cleans easy, and of course, transforms junk meat at a dollar a pound into lean and wonderful ground beef. As I type this, the family are all enjoying my chili (now one step closer to completely from-scratch).

Now I look back on over a decade of sub-par fatty ground beef and smack myself over how I stupidly tucked that grinder away instead of using it the whole time. Sure I wouldn't have been able to use it where I am now, but I still would have gotten years of home-ground delight. Oh well. Better late than never, as they say.

I love our kitchenaid meat grinder.  I'm sure there are better machines but for what we need (and it was a gift anyway), it's perfect.  I grind up a decent hunk of a deer each year and it works wonderfully for that.  Cleanup is a bit of a chore but not bad if you just used it to make 15 lbs of ground venison.

We just got a kitchen aid in the past couple of years.
The grinder gets top marks from many reviewers.
I can't find beef that cheap,  but there are plenty of other meats I would like to grind.
Making my own sausage is high on my foodie bucket list.

I grew up in a house which used a hand-cranked meat grinder for various things, so to me it was "normal". I made sure I got the meat-grinder attachment for my Kenwood Chef which was fine until a couple of months ago when it started doing a funny 'clunky' thing. I'm waiting impatiently for Hubby to take it apart and see if it's repairable.

Mike Haasl wrote:

Cleanup is a bit of a chore but not bad if you just used it to make 15 lbs of ground venison.

I use ground venison in spaghetti sauce, enchiladas, chili, and with grated cheese mixed in, it makes great burgers. A trick to make cleaning easier is to chop and freeze some sweet peppers and still frozen put ~1/2 cup through after the meat. This helps the last bit of meat through and is easier to clean out. So long as the last of the meat + pepper goes together in a recipe, it's a win!

Great idea, thanks Jay!  I always have frozen chopped peppers on hand so this will be easy to try!