Yeah, those are rather long pulses he’s using there.
I highly recommend the grinder attachment. Once you have it, all sorts of home made products become available. Cheap pork on sale? Make sausages (either links, which the attachment kit includes nipples for, or patties). Cheap chuck on sale? Make burgers, or preground beef for all sorts of things.
I freeze all of the grinding equipment for at least an hour before grinding. The attachment, auger (screw thing), blades, and plates all get to freezer cold. I precut the meat into managable chunks, and put on a cookie sheet to cool to “just about frozen… but not.” The cold helps keep the fat from liquifying from the heat induced by the grinding process, and also helps the auger keep hold of it, and the blades to slice better.
Thanks butler1850. It’s definitely worth considering, since we’ve got the KA mixer already. Making sausage intimidates me just a little though; maybe it’s the casing.
Don’t use casing then. I don’t think I’ve ever actually stuffed sausage into casings, except once at a cooking class. Bulk sausage is fine for almost all uses.
We use the grinder to process vegetables and to grind meat. The key is breaking it down as soon as you are finished and washing with soap and hot water and rinse in hot water until it smells like plastic and metal. You want none of it to feel the least bit greasy because bacteria can live in that grease.
Pumpkin was the best so far. Usually home made pumpkin has so much water, it doesn’t make a great pie. then kitchen aid separated it into juice and pulp.
You just have to squeeze it through cheesecloth or, in a pinch, a clean tee shirt.
Well, I was never able to squeeze out the pumpkin sufficiently with just cloth. It was a lot of effort and a lot of mess. Using the grinder was a breeze.
Do you roast it first? I grew up making pumpkin pie from fresh pumpkin, never had to grind or squeeze through cloth. Just roasted the pumpkins and pureed with a food processor.
Yes, we bake it and peel it. When we baked a medium pumpkin we got 1 and 2/3 quarts of juice and almost that in firm pureed flesh, which is close in water content to canned and works better in my recipes.
It’s very easy. You can buy a ball of natural salted casings from any of multiple suppliers. Slip a length of casing onto the sausage attachement (sort of reminiscent of a condom), start the machine and feed in the meat. Once the casing is filled, remove from the attachment and twist at intervals to form the links.
Re: cleaning meat. If you’re really paranoid about bacteria and such, fill a sink with cold water and dump in a couple tablespoons of bleach. Dip the chuck roast into the water for a few seconds and remove, then rinse with cold water. We did this routinely in Africa to kill any parasites on meat and vegetables. There was no noticeable taste of bleach after doing this.
Thanks Chefguy!
I tend to do far more patties than I do sausages in casings. For me, casings are tough to find, without going mail order… but mail order works fine, and shelf life of the salted ones is near indefinite.
Pack the patties between 2 sheets of wax paper prior to stacking (one on each side of each patty) to make them easier to seperate.
As Chefguy says, it’s really easy though to make them in casings… it takes a second to figure out, but once you’re going, it’s easy. And you get to play with all sorts of flavors. Fry off a sample of each batch prior to stuffing, because you can’t change the seasonings once their in the casing.