Originally Posted by Anjin
I'm picking up some great pointers here and flowing the thread closely, as I have never lived anywhere before where I had occasion to grind meat.

Any tips on methods to grind, an addition to the nature of the fat content? My brother is big on hand grinders, but I think that would pall pretty quickly. There are some nice powered ones at the outdoor shops like Cabela's or Midway, or at the source recommended by High Noon.

I''m thinking of just getting an meat grinder attachment for our heavy duty KitchenAid stand mixer . The KitchenAid brand accessories look like plastic and aren't apt to last, but the are a couple of aluminum or stainless attachments from other suppliers that should handle heavy work. Thoughts?

And regarding elk meat burgers falling apart, I now have one of those heavy cast iron Blackstone camping griddles, so there's no need for the typical grills where the burger can fall.

Another member [Owll?] brought a huge griddle to Armijo Springs this year to cook just bought everything, and it worked like a charm. It turned out that I never got to put mine to use. wink

Norm



Bought a Cabela's 1 hp grinder about 10 years ago. Expensive at the time, but it grinds 50 lbs of elk in about 15 minutes. It weighs 68 lbs. (A long time ago a machinist told me the best machines were the heaviest. He was right.) I make two passes, one in 10 mm and the next in either 7 mm for chili or 4 mm for burgers. Two grinds helps to spread the suet evenly also. I use between a 5 and 10% mixture, just buy a few pounds of frozen beef suet and mix it in while grinding. Also, a butcher told me not to trim off all the connective tissue, that it helps to bind the ground meat together. Seems to work well that way. I do trim all the elk fat off though. Hand grinders are worthless, especially with cartilage and silver skin. Good luck.