Customer Reviews

Lem #5 .25hp ss electric grinder

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Hello,

We have been looking at grinders with the thought of making homemade sausages for a while. When we got our tax return this year we decided to go for it. I decided to go look at grinders at Bass Pro Shop with the intention of buying a manual hand cranked grinder. Someone else was in the same section looking at some sausage making things and we got to talking. He said that he had this grinder and it has worked very well for them. I had thought perhaps if we got an electric grinder we might go for a bigger one, but he said this should be enough for what we want to do. So I purchased it. We have made bratwurst, italian sausages, and breakfast links so far, but made each of those a few times as they are our favorites. We couldn't be happier with the grinder, it cleans up pretty easy and after I clean and dry it I spray some food grade silicone spray to protect the parts. My wife and I usually do it together, one person feeding the meat into the grinder and the other controling the sausage/casing part. I've used it alone and though a little more difficult, I was able to do it all myself and probably with a little practice it would be just as easy, maybe just a little more time consuming. I recommend this grinder though I haven't tried any others, I've hear that LEM has good customer service, though haven't needed them, and the grinder seems very solid (the whole reason we decided to skip the kitchenaid attachment).

Hope this helps! Cheers!

When I was shopping for a meat grinder, I first checked the reviews. This one didn't have many, but they were good, and since it is made of stainless steel, I decided to purchase it.

Since I have only used it once so far, I can't comment on longevity but it did a great job. I primarily purchased it to grind beef for hamburger, as I feel you never know what's in commercially packaged ground beef and I like my burgers rare. I ground about 12 pounds of meat twice and it never hesitated. The instructions tell you not to touch the grinder until it has cooled down but it got BARELY lukewarm when I used it. It might get hotter if you are processing an entire deer or something similar, but I don't think it would be a problem.

I was planning on keeping it in a closet, but I found a permanent place on my counter for it. However, if you need to move it, it is not THAT heavy (about 32 pounds) and most people could pick it up. This is a fairly large appliance, so you do need some room.

What really amazed me is that the motor sounds similar to the one in my $2,000.00 Hobart mixer. Not all that loud and strong and steady. As another reviewer mentioned, I got my meat ready ahead of time, so when I was ready to grind, all I had to do was feed the meat. This grinder works extremely fast, so you wouldn't want to be cutting up meat while grinding. I also followed the instructions and put my meat in the freezer for about an hour to get it very cold-some parts were partially frozen but that did no harm. Fast and easy to use-couldn't ask for more!

Clean-up was easy and I don't think the cleaning kit that is sold for it is necessary. A standard bottle brush fits inside the grinder housing and if you soak them for a bit, the meat falls out of the holes in the plates, even the one with the smaller holes. Before I disassembled the grinder, I did run a couple of slices of bread through it to help clean out the remaining meat, although there was very little waste.

I do need to order a can of food grade silicone spray, as the instructions tell you to spray all the parts before putting them away. I wasn't aware that I needed this when I ordered the grinder so, for now, I just made sure all of my parts are extremely dry to prevent possible corrosion.

Now that I have the grinder, I am exploring the possibility of making sausage. The burgers came out so good that I am encouraged to try something new. The burgers were very juicy-just have to make sure you don't squeeze them while cooking and don't cook them too long. I even cooked them from frozen and they were excellent. I used a chuck roast and some sirloin steaks (mixed both meats together after the first grind) and didn't trim off any of the fat. You do need some fat for the best burgers. Of course, if you have diet restrictions that limit fat, you can cut off most of the fat but you need to cook the burgers rare, as otherwise, they will be tough and dry.

This grinder has a solid look and feel to it and I think it will last a very long time! Highly recommended!

My daughter won this grinder in a charity raffle, so I didn't pay the full price for it. After using it however, I would say it is definitely worth the asking price. It is extremely well constructed and engineered. It grinds meat like crazy. I have used it to grind many geese that I turned into jerky. I've ground the trimmings of 2 whitetail deer. This grinder will usually take the meat as fast as you can feed it. I learned after the first time that I used it that it is best to cut the meat into strips 1" to 1-1/2" wide before you even start grinding so the machine won't have to wait for you. It seems like the auger is always hungry. When I did my most recent venison trimmings, after prepping the cuts, it only took a few minutes to grind close to 20lbs. I also used the large stuffing tube while I was grinding and packaged the ground venison as I was grinding it, which basically cut the processing time in half. One accessory that I recently purchased but haven't tried yet is the foot pedal power switch. I think it will come in very handy when I am doing the more delicate task of stuffing sausage with the grinder. The #5 is a small unit, but has plenty of power, and with the various plates that are available, should fit the needs of most part-time users and sportsmen like me who just enjoy the process of bringing protein from the woods to the table.

This grinder is a little beast. I've fought with a little Oster grinder for years and spent many an evening repeatedly cursing and cleaning the blades of gristle. This unit is simply what it says it is, and it works. Make sure you get it tightened down well as with any grinder and it'll grind through anything you can fit down the tube, which is appropriately sized smallish so you can't possibly over load it, good design fail safe! Make no mistake though you cut anything up into 1 inch strips and it will suck them through and spit them out faster than any home owner grinder I've seen!
It is an extremely heavily built unit, make no mistake, everything is heavy solid stainless (except one plastic wear bushing that they provide a spare for). The loading tube and auger assembly probably weigh 5ish lbs so you know you aren't going to hurt anything.
I primarily go through six Sitka Black Tail deer a year as a subsistence meat hunter and this unit fulfills the grinding I need to do without any issue. Hoping this fall I'll be able to get one of the brown bears that's been bugging me the past few months and see if I can make some strong sausage out of him which will be a serious test of this unit!
Great unit if you want the smallest commercial grade grinder on the market.

Our basic model cabelas grinder that we found a few years ago was almost dead so we were looking for a new one. Preferably a well built one that we can get parts for. We bought this in the fall and just used it this week. We are impressed. We grind moose meat- no bones, just meat. This machine went through the meat quickly and we didn't have to run it through a second time as we did with the previous machine. And we thought it was quiet compared to our old one. Hope this lasts us a long time.

I bought this machine because I'm tired of the crummy ground meat I get from our local grocery stores, and so I decided to buy my own cuts of meat and grind them myself. Though this machine is a little pricey compared to other, small grinders I researched, it is of very high quality and very easy to use. It is all stainless steel, it grinds meat quickly and extremely well, and is very easy to clean. Everything that is in the grinding path can be easily detached and/or taken apart, which makes cleaning a breeze. It takes less than 5 minutes to remove and rinse off the parts, whence they can be thrown into the dishwasher to get them squeaky clean. All in all, this is a very nice machine and is well worth the price. If you treat it right and keep it clean, it will last a very long time!

I purchased the LEM #5 a few weeks ago. I was a little worried it might not be large enough to process deer but I now see there was NO cause for worry! I have processed three whitetails during archery and black powder season so far this year in North Florida. 80's of ground meat and 40's of sausage (No need for a separate stuffer, the stuffing head works great). The only issue I have seen is that the fine grinding head does not handle the silver skin very well, it will clog. However I can grind a whole deer with the course head w/o stopping once. This is the grind I prefer anyway for burger and sausage. Great product!

The product works great and as described. However the vendor said it was in stock when i ordered when in fact it wasn't. It took two weeks for me to get it. I ordered it for use before a large picnic but wasn't able to due to inaccurate inventory information. So lesson learned is you can't always believe it when it says the item is in stock.

After just 1 minute of use, its now broken! I threw in some small pieces of meat that were not going down so I used the plastic stomper it came with to push it in. Only bad part is that this "big bite technology" that helps grab the meat so you don't have to stomp grabbed the stomper and now its stuck!!! This was my very first grinder given to me by my husband and he wanted to give me the best, I read the puny 1 page instruction booklet it came with and all its warnings, and also I watched all the videos I could find on the net on how to use this grinder properly, but NO WHERE did anyone say "don't use the long end of the stomper"!

Update 12/31/11
I couldn't get a hold of LEM do to the holidays, so out of frustration, I took a big steak knife to the stomper and managed to cut it out after 30 minutes. Now, minus all the new scratches, it works good as new. I'm still very upset that LEM engineered a stomper that's too long where something like this could happen. Could it of killed LEM to of made both sides of the stomper the same length? Minus the poor engineering of the stomper, the grinder itself is pretty good, so I'm upgrading my 1 star rating to 3.