wff_ng_7 wrote:
> Yesterday I decided to try making ground beef myself using an old electric
> meat grinder I inherited. I believe the grinder is about 40 years old. It
> belonged to my grandmother, who passed away in 1973, and then my father, who
> passed away in 2003. I don't know how much my grandmother used it, but I
> know my father only used it once, around 1980, and then gave up on it. I
> felt about the same way yesterday, frustrated and about to give up too!
>
> I bought a bottom round roast, cut it up into chunks, and began. I'm sure it
> helps if you read the instructions, but they were long gone. There were two
> disks with holes, one with large, pie slice shaped holes, and one with small
> round holes. For some reason, I thought the disk with the small round holes
> was the one to use (probably faded memories of such a disk on the meat
> grinder at the butcher years ago).
>
> It didn't take too long for the grinder to get all clogged up with white
> connective tissue. At this point I decided the disk with the large holes was
> probably the one I should be using. So I took the small holed disk off,
> cleaned things up a bit, and put the large holed disk on. I started grinding
> again, but still ran into major clogging problems. I kept taking the disk
> off and cleaning it, and finally finished running all the meat through once.
> The results weren't the greatest... what a pain... this just isn't worth the
> trouble!
>
> Since the meat wasn't ground to my satisfaction in one pass, I ran it
> through again. Part way through this second pass, I discovered the source of
> my problems. When I changed disks from the small holed one to the large
> holed one, the grinder "knife" fell into my output bowl. I found it in the
> ground meat on my second pass. I was trying to grind with no knife in the
> grinder. No wonder it wasn't working so well! ;-)
>
> I put the knife back into the grinder where it belonged, what a difference
> it made. The grinding went very smoothly with the large holed disk and the
> knife installed. Too bad I didn't figure this out earlier, and too bad I
> didn't start with the large holed disk.
>
> But I'm still not sure what the correct method is, with how screwed up my
> efforts were. Do you grind once and only once, with the large holed disk? Or
> two passes, both with the large holed disk, or two passes, first with the
> large holed disk and then with the small holed disk? I'm looking for a
> result similar in texture to packaged ground beef at the supermarket.
>
> This particular batch of ground beef went into stuffed green peppers... the
> classic recipe with a ground beef and rice filling, with tomato sauce. That
> came out very good in spite of my grinding errors. I couldn't resist making
> them... green peppers were on sale quite cheap this week (as was the bottom
> round roast).
>

FWIW, I use the larger holed disc on my Kitchen Aid meat grinder when I am
grinding meat and the smaller one for grinding seitan.

I never have to put anything through twice.

--
..:Heather:.
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