I’d like to make my own sausage, but I don’t have a meat grinder. They’re next to impossible to find these days, plus the old-fashioned, hand-cranked ones have to be anchored to a surface, and my house isn’t conducive to that sort of thing. And I’m sure as hell NOT going to pay $169 :eek: for an electric model like this!
Simply put, can I put meat through my food processor without damaging it (the processor, that is)? If I can, should I use the shred blade or should I just put it into the little bowl with the blade?
Ive tried this before. The results are not very good. You get “mulched” meat rather than ground. Uneven sizes. Some of it gets turned to paste, some of it stays fairly chunky.
Your best bet is to go to a butcher, find a piece of meat you like and have him/her grind it. Shouldnt cost you extra (that is above the original cost of the meat).
I also tried to make my own sausage meat using my food processor. I used a raw pork chop. It totally mangled the blades of the processor, and as rabbit says, it mushed rather than ground the meat. I now have a new processor.
If I were you I’d get one of those old-fashioned hand-wound meat mincers.
True, it doesn’t work very well. The Cuisinart people say you should chill the meat in the freezer for an hour or two, so it gets really firm, then use the regular chopping blade and pulse it.
When I’ve done it I’ve gotten results similar to rabbit’s. I’m not sure why the pork chop mangled jjimm’s blade, unless he forgot to bone the chop first.
Rabbit’s right; find a good butcher and have him do the grinding for you. This doesn’t always work. I wanted to replicate my granddaddy’s homemade ham salad once, but my butcher refused to put cooked ham through his big grinder for me.
I was lucky enough to score grandpa’s hand-cranked meat grinder after my mother died, but I’m ascared of it.
I’ve made burgers by processing chicken or beef in my Hamilton Beach food processor. The chicken worked better; with the beef I ended up with some stringy stuff that I suppose a real grinder would have taken care of.
Well, I came here to definitively answer a question of whether a food processor can grind/sheet metal but I see now that something has gone awry with my data-interpretation module.
I should probably stop and try to debug the visual processing unit.
Good luck with your sausage and please do try to avoid processing steel in the kitchen (its bad for the countertops…).
Maybe you can buy an attachment for your mixer that will do the job? I have a grinder attachment for my KitchenAid mixer, so I know at least that particular company makes them.
I haven’t had an occasion to use mine yet, so I can’t say how well it works from personal experience. My brother in law says his works ‘fine’ for whatever good that statement from the chatty bastard will do you.