What are you Cooking the Week of January 14, 2024?

[Italiancook]

Len, the ground meat looks wonderful. Is it time-consuming?

[RiversideLen]

Italiancook, you have to slice the meat into strips or cubes first and there's the clean up afterwards, but the grinding itself goes pretty fast. Altogether it's a little time consuming but not terrible.

[Joan Simpson]

Those meatballs look great Len!

[navlys]

A lot of people back in the 50's had those huge metal meat grinders. My mother had one but I can't remember seeing her use it. She also had a mangler but not for cooking.

[chocomouse]

I have my mother's meat grinder, but I haven't used it for years. She attached it to the ironing board that dropped down from it's own little "closet" in the kitchen. I'm sure the ground meat that Len is producing is better, healthier, than what we buy in a regular grocery store, but I'm too lazy and disorganized to manage that. When I buy meat at a "real" butcher/meat shop, I do notice the difference.

[BakerAunt]

I remember my mother using a meat grinder when I was very young. We actually have two in our house, one of which belonged to my husband's parents and one of which belonged to the lady who owned our house for nearly fifty years. (A lot of stuff came with the house; some we donated, and some we kept.) I've never used either of them. They do indeed clamp onto a counter. I'm not sure how easy they would be to clean.

In our location, I do not know that we would save money grinding our own. However, I do like Len's meatballs with the added carrots--a good way of increasing the flavor and the nutritional value! I bet they taste great!

[Mike Nolan]

As kids, we used to use the meat grinder to grind up meat, onions and potatoes for corned beef hash. I think we've got a meat grinder like that from some auction but I don't know where it is and I doubt we've ever used it.

[RiversideLen]

I like having the grinder for convenience and freshness of the ground meat. It also has 3 different sizes of grinding plates so I can select the size I want. It also came with sausage stuffing tubes, I might be tempted to try some day.

Ground or shredded carrot can go into just about any ground meat, but the reason I do it is because it helps to push through remnants of the ground meat. To clean it, I use a bottle brush and a nylon bristle brush for the grinding plate, so it's really not too difficult.

[cwcdesign]

My mother had a meat grinder that I think she attached to her Sunbeam stand mixer. I have no idea how many times she used it. I periodically think about getting one for my KitchenAid, but then we don't eat that much meat.

[RiversideLen]

My mom also had a grinder attachment for the Sunbeam MixMaster. The Sunbeam wasn't heavy enough to support the weight of the grinder like the KA does, so the grinder had legs. I recall my mom grinding the turkey livers and stuff to put into the stuffing (she would cook it after grinding it) and grinding left over holiday ham to make a sandwich spread. She would also grind poppyseeds once or twice a year to use in a pastry (kolaches) and maybe a poppyseed cake (she didn't make that too often). I'd say she probably used the grinder a half dozen times a year, tops, but it was there when she needed it.

[Author]

Posts