Who makes their own mince?

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rarogirl1, Oct 21, 4:22am
what kind of meat do you use please?

rainrain1, Oct 21, 4:32am
We don't make our own sausages, the butcher does them for us, and we use beef. I'm not sure if we have ever made mutton into sausages but I can see no reason why you couldn't.Beef would have more flavour though

rarogirl1, Oct 21, 4:36am
what kind of machine would I need to mince meat? Will one of those kitchen whizz things do?

pam.delilah, Oct 21, 4:42am
I use rump steak, trimmed of fatand just blitz it in the food processor

rainrain1, Oct 21, 4:42am
My whizz wouldn't cope with mince, it would probably wreck it. But some of the more expensive variety might.I don't know what you could use apart from one of those very old wind up mincers that screw on the side of the bench, they have a crank handle...great things if you can get your hands one one

maxwell.inc, Oct 21, 4:45am
you can buy them brand new on TM :o)

rainrain1, Oct 21, 4:53am
The guys used to mince up meat down in the garage here, gawd knows what they used, probably a self made invention run off a bicycle wheel or some such contraption. I remember the meat flying for miles and the mess to clean up afterwards... I must have a look on TradeMe though ...

duckmoon, Oct 21, 5:31am
my friend does it for pork mince;
she has a kenwood chef with a mince attachment

rarogirl1, Oct 21, 5:50am
thanks for that uli

nauru, Oct 21, 6:01am
I make my own mince, any type of meat, I have a mincer attachment for my Kenwood chef.Prior to that I used a clapped to bench hand machine and it was good too.As someone else said, you can get them on TM.

uli, Oct 21, 6:03am
I have a Kenwood Major and nearly burned the motor out on several occasions. it works fine if you neatly trimmed supermarket meat. But if you have real meat with tendons and flap meat etc then you can have a real problem with an electric motor.

I am now always using my old hand driven one and it works much better and has outlasted several generations so far.

seniorbones, Oct 21, 8:38am
I have a mincer attachment that fits on my mixer and its great, have minced meat but have yet to make sausages, which I do plan to do but need to find a recipe!

beaker59, Oct 21, 11:10am
I use my mincer allot as I am a Hunter it is great for getting the most out of game. I also buy cheap fatty pork or pigs heads to add in to meats such as wild goat as they are actually too lean. I have minced Venison, wild pork, goat, beef, wild sheep(yep they do exist and are delicious) hare, and turkey. Chill the meat first colder the better but not frozen.

Mine has a No 5 head which seems the right size for a medium grain mince. It is a chinese one in cast iron it hand cranks and attaches to the table (I have made plywood protector for the table) and I highly recomend them you can get one on TM.

cookessentials, Oct 21, 6:10pm
Depending on how much mincing you do..you can get semi-commercial ones if you do alot of mincing/sausage making. Sadly, Kenwood are not the same as they were 30 odd years ago and are belt driven. If you want a mincer that attaches to your stand mixer, then Kitchenaid is the one you want. They are gear driven, direct drive,all metal construction ( no plastics like Kenwood and others) and hand assembled in the USA.

knowsley, Oct 23, 5:07am
I generally use chuck steak for mincing. For hamburger patties, chuck mixed with sirloin. :)

uli, Oct 23, 5:40am
Very little chuck and sirloin on wild animals - that is why the mincers linked into post #9 and #15 are proving their worth.

With "clean" young supermarket meat you can use any mincer - it will always work - even a small electric one will do the job.

Although I must admit that I would rather grill or quickly pan fry the sirloin to rare myself rather than mincing it.

knowsley, Oct 23, 5:46am
Reading the original post, I see no mention of wild animals.

uli, Oct 23, 5:50am
No - the original poster just wanted to know which meat.

And basically the answer was: any meat really. I would use the cheapest myself as that would be toughest too.

From there we came to the wild things I guess :)

beaker59, Oct 24, 4:43am
Sorry that was me that talked about wild meats :(

greerg, Oct 25, 8:08am
The only thing to watch for with older clamp on mincers is that modern benches are thicker!The clamp on mine (36 years old) doesn't fit onto my bench so I have to put it on the bread board then sit on that to hold it steady.Not elegant, but fine for the Xmas fruit mince but I wouldn't want to do it that way regularly.

0800xford, Jan 11, 8:41am
a trap for young players aye, the -edge- is double the thickness of the rest of the bench, it looks 36mm but it's 18 twice [annoying]
i have a wooden box and a piece of nice solid timber i plan to modify to suit the mincer i'm going to buy.

quick question: #5 = 5mm holes #8 = 8mm holes, correct?
i'm pretty sure the blades can just be sharpened on a regular flat oil stone.

beaker59, Jan 11, 9:38am
Mine is about 3 yrs old and has done quite allot of work shows no sign of needing sharpening.

The #5 and #8 don't seem to be related to mm at all in fact from memory the #8 has smaller holes than the #5.

Mine is a #5 and seems ideal for general mince meat production.

I have a small folding wooden picnic table which I fix my mincer too. For general domestic use a hand turned mincer is ample.

0800xford, Jan 11, 8:07pm
yeah an 8mm hole is huge! even a 5mm hole looks a bit big.
maybe it's "gauge" like number 8 wire?

[some decent pics and info]
www.porkert.biz/export/php/index_meat_a.php

if i use 'stewing meat' the mince will be tough right?
what's the best store bought meat to use, naturally i'll get better stuff as it goes on special.

0800xford, Jan 11, 8:10pm
AHA! it might be the diameter of the blades...?

lilyfield, Jan 11, 8:23pm
its measured by the diameter of the inlet