Weston #8 Electric Meat Grinder & Sausage Stuffer, Grinds 2-3 Pounds Per Minute, 575 Watts, White

Bought this grinder after lots of research mainly to make our own sausages. The reviews were good and this is what put this one just about the Panasonic which also rated well.The main reason was ease of use and American company owned, plus extras (including parts) were listed on the companies web site. The first hurdle we hit though was when the instructions stated you needed food grade silicone spray, new one for me never knew there was such a thing, turns out you need it to lubricate the parts and has to be food grade otherwise its poisonous to you as it would be in contact with the food. Found best deal was Weston's own brand but through a seller on eBay. Search around but make sure it is FDA approved as food grade. So had to wait for that to arrive before we could begin. Grinding meat is very easy, followed both the manual and other people's suggestion online and cut the meat into large cubes, then popped it on a tray into the freezer for a short while, 15 to 30 minutes, this actually makes it less sticky and soft for feeding down the tube into the grinding part of it. The unit comes with three discs for fine, medium and large (or course) grinding, we have found medium is fine for what we need, so far we have ground, pork, beef and lamb with no problems. Clean up is easy just remove the large ring nut to remove the grinding plate, the blade unit and auger plus the actual grinder head (that's the tubing that this all fits into and where you feed the meat down). That is all that needs cleaning in hot soapy water, nothing can be put in the dishwasher. Now the sausage making is a bit harder and I feel needs two people for making it easier, one to work the sausage casing and the other to feed the meat down the chute. Basically you remove the grinder plate disc and the blade, put the stuffing spacer & stuffing funnel onto the end of the grinder head placing the ring nut over it to hold it in place, trust me when you see it you will understand. You then (after rinsing and soaking your casings) pull the casing slowly over the funnel until you reach the end now we found it best not to tie the end of the casing because when you start feeding the meat down from the top you will get lots of air from the funnel end before it gets there, this will let you release it out the end, the meat will only go as fast as you feed it. Then just feed it into the casings as you want until you run out of meat. A quick note we let the meat when mixed with the seasonings to sit for about an hour at least so they could work into the meat plus the meat was again not as sticky as it is first ground. Now the only problem we found that wasn't covered anywhere is once you stop feeding the meat down the auger has nothing to push along so you are left with a lot of meat left in the funnel to use, we had to take the funnel off (which means the ring nut is left hanging on the sausages as well) whilst you pushed the remainder down with a plastic spoon handle. Need to find something better to do this with as we did have one accident and the casing split, so had to work that meat into another piece. Again clean up is easy and if I forgot to mention the stuffing spacer and funnel fit inside the stomper (there word not mine) for easy storage. I would call it the meat pushed myself. Its the plastic part you use to force the meat down the chute from the meat tray on top. But otherwise a good result all round, the sausage part does take time as you have to be careful. The reason we wanted to make our own sausages was two fold, firstly my wife is gluten and dairy intolerant so this was we could make something knowing what is inside it. The second is we are originally from England and wanted to make our own British bangers, ones you buy over here claiming to be them are not trust me. I have to say these were amazing and when cooked on our grill they never spat, burst or caused a flare up. I will upload two pictures (that's all they allow, sorry) one of the unit grinding some pork and the other of our very first British bangers ready for cooking. If anyone is interested this is the basic banger recipe we used and was great.... 2 lbs of regular ground pork 2 and ¾ tsps of salt ¼ tsp of ground ginger ¼ tsp of ground sage 1/8 of a tsp of ground mace (or nutmeg) ½ tsp white pepper ¼ cup bread crumbs1/3 cup of cold water Sausage casings Mix together all ingredients (except for the sausage casings). Enjoy. Okay another few notes, I used cheap country style shoulder rib meat that gets reduced in the grocery store, just trimmed it a bit, it was perfect. Also I bought casings that had good reviews and hog casings are the best if you want natural, we did and they were not tough, chewy or in fact odd tasting, just right. I hope this helps other people deciding on the grinder or even to make there own sausages.

This grinder is what I've been looking for. I had a previous grinder that was junk and I took it back to the store. This grinder has three different stages of grinding. The meat comes out just like you bought it at the grocery store. I'm very pleased! I would recommend this grinder to a friend.