Help a beginner

[William]

Hello, I'm new to all this and would appreciate help on the equipment to buy. It needs to be powered, not manual, and my main question is whether to separate the jobs of mincing and stuffing, or do it all with one machine. Appreciate any help you can offer. Kind regards.

[Big Guy]

That's a hard question to answer. A lot depends on how much sausage you intend on making at a time, and the type of sausage. Electric meat grinders for large batches of sausage 30# or more should be 3/4 hp or more in size. A seperate stuffer is a great addition if making lots of sausage too. For the occasional maker you can get buy with a hand crank grinder and stuff with a nozzle attachment to the grinder. This is very time consuming and you need to learn as you go as to how fast to feed the meat to fill the casings. A proper stuffer is a dream come true. These are my observations.

[William]

Much appreciated. Thank you. Why is the HP of an electric grinder important?

[dougal]

Hello, I'm new to all this and would appreciate help on the equipment to buy. It needs to be powered, not manual, and my main question is whether to separate the jobs of mincing and stuffing, or do it all with one machine. ...

One 'ideal' starting point is a powered mincer and a manual piston stuffer (with some form of geared drive).

You can select your meat and ask your butcher to mince it for you. But for more independence you'll want to DIY.
Almost any mincer will do the job. Even a mixer (Kenwood, KitchenAid...) with the right attachment. Old ones can be cheap if found locally via eBay, for example.
The *less* powerful the mincer, the *more* pre-grind prep you'll need to do - trimming away silverskin, gristle, etc. If you want to mince nasty bits, you need power. But I don't want nasty bits in *my* sausage.
Of course for more throughput a bigger mincer will help...

You *can* fit a stuffing horn onto the front of most mixers. It does work. It needs lots of hands and its not anywhere near as easy (fun even) as doing it with a proper (piston rather than screw-fed) stuffer. And some plastic tubes for the front of a mincer are much cheaper than a proper stuffer.

Its up to you what the scale of your ambition, and the extent of your budget commitment, might be.

[William]

Many thanks, Dougal, most helpful. I will be making small batches for a hobby rather than threatening Tesco, and I was thinking of a mincer of about 1000 W. Does that sound about right to you?

Also, have you any tips on the best way to twist the links once the stuffing is done? Many thanks, William.

[saucisson]

Paul Kribs has a very nice tutorial on his website here:

http://www.btinternet.com/~happydudevir/

There's a button bottom left that takes you to the sausagemaking section. There is also a link to it on the front page of the main sausagemaking.org site.

Dave

[William]

Superb. Thanks, Dave.

[dougal]

... I will be making small batches for a hobby rather than threatening Tesco, and I was thinking of a mincer of about 1000 W. Does that sound about right to you?

Some motor wattages might be misleading, judging by some of the posts on here.
http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopic.php?t=2080

My Lidl's (sub �30) mincer claims 550w. Old Kenwoods (like my current KM220) are less than that - and work adequately for home mincing. ISTR the old 700 series was 300w or so.

{And yes, a complete motorised mincer with 3 years warranty cost less than a new Kenwood attachment... }

[jenny_haddow]

Mine's from Lidl. It's been going strong now for about 6 years. Minces 4-5 kg of meat in one go, no problem.

[William]

Thanks both. So good to have people to share their experience before you waste a load of money. Thanks.