Newbie Hamburger Grinder -- question

[thirdeye]

Originally Posted by airedale

OK, gents -- an update. I made some Italian sausage today.

Riffing on the strips idea I spread my ground meat (about 6#) on a cookie sheet, maybe 1/2-3/4" thick and partially froze it. I then cut it into strips with a circular pizza cutter. I fed the grinder with 3-6" pieces of strip put right down the grinder throat. They didn't self-feed as reliably as meat strips, but very little stomper effort was needed to persuade them to move. This was probably 3x faster than my former amateur-hour technique of putting globs into the hopper and mashing them into the throat with the stomper.

Ground meat strips may be old news to you veterans, but it was new to me.

This was for your second grind?

[airedale]

Originally Posted by thirdeye

This was for your second grind?

Actually I decided to try only one grind (6mm), so this was before the meat went into the grinder with an open stuffing plate installed. But I think the frozen-strip idea would have worked either way.

Yesterday I did some Polish sausage and left the 6mm plate/second grind in place during stuffing. It was really slow going; I think the plate got partially plugged up. The sausages do not have a lot of texture, either, so I thought I'd try a single grind (6 mm) and see how I liked that. I generally like some texture in a sausage.

[ModelMaker]

Stuffing with a grinder is always going to give you a smearing of the meat and fat with a loss of texture. The only fix is stuff with the first grind will be a little better texture.
To do it the way your imagining is to stuff with a (wait for it) stuffer!!
Ed