Meat grinders

Those of you who check out the "what's cooking" thread know that I made a bunch of sausage this weekend. It was mostly fairly frustrating, though I did get the hang of it (the Hungarian is smoking away, and it looks and smells great). I've come to the realization that the KA grinder attachment, even this vintage all metal one, sucks. Having to refreeze everything every couple pounds just makes bulk sausage making difficult. I found it to be fine for stuffing sausages, though. Is there a dedicated meat grinder that doesn't break the bank, but does a good job? I'd even get a manual one, if it was much better than the KA attachment. Considering that I got the KA attachment for free, and I'm broke, not breaking the bank might not do the job, but I'm happy to save up (assuming this sausage is good, which I should know later tonight).

 

Unfortunately refreezing is part of the game, short of dedicated professional grinders. What we used to do is have two worm gears, plates, and blades, and swap them through the freezer as needed. That's where the smearing will take place, and where most of the heat from friction builds up. An ice cube in the mixing process cures a multitude of ills as well. Another trick is to partially freeze your meat in grinder sized strips. Do not grind frozen meat! I know, common sense, but I've seen on two occasions people do hundreds of dollars of damage in seconds doing just that.
The part of the KA grinder that sucks the most to me is the stuffer. I don't know if you used the little tube to case everything, but it will give you the rage. You have no control of the casing, and you have to paddle your meat, then run it back through, breaking your emulsion and beating up your meat. A crank style stuffer is a solid investment of you are planning on doing this a lot. If you have any questions let me know, I used to make and case a ton of sausage, and still have some buddies deep in the charcuterie game that can answer even the really esoteric questions.
Edit: mixed metaphors fixed

 

I used the larger of the too funnels, and I had no issue controlling sausage size of stuffing rate. I put pressure on both the tube and the meat going in.

Looks like I need to spend some bucks. Unfortunately, the sausage was friggin' amazingly good, so I'll want to do this again.

 

What kind of casings were you using? The pumps really aren't that expensive, and allow you to get perfectly stuffed sausages. This isn't too important with most things, but the amount of air gets very important for dried/fermented sausages. The lack of mechanical agitation allows for more delicate emulsions (mortadella/hot dogs), and the use of more delicate natural or collagen casings. Another cheap investment would be hog rings and pliers unless you really like to tie knots. Sausage making is so much fun.

 

Hog casing. The knots were a pain in the butt.

 

I had never made sausage before, and I discovered that 3 pounds is more than enough for four people (my freezer is full of sausage, and I'm glad I have a sous vide setup). I had no problem with doing 3 pounds with my setup, but doing 20 pounds isn't much more difficult than doing 3, if the setup doesn't need constant freezing. That's kinda where I am.

 

Three pounds is a decent amount. Cooking the sausages in a circulator also gives you a lot more leeway in casing tension, as they won't burst as easily as with most other methods. If you get good with the tensioning technique and can keep your emulsion tight you can get sausage that is grillable from raw. It just takes practice. The hog rings work well for larger (>1.5")casing, saving a lot of headache. Anything smaller and you have to use string.
Are you seasoning the meat, running it through the grinder, directly into the casing, or are you grinding it, paddling in the seasoning, then casing?

 

Grinding, paddling, casing, then into the water bath.

 

I just saw the pictures. The sausages look good. It's a fun rabbit hole to go down!

 

Wonderful!

I always get carried away, make too much and run around dropping off tasty pork products at friends..

 

Thanks, Andre. I gave a couple people a care package, as well, Jim. They seemed pleased.

 

:wa