Customer Reviews

Norpro Heavy-Duty Meat Grinder

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

easy to assemble .. easy to operate .. makes awesome ground beef .. easy to clean afterwards .. after cleaning and drying, I place the grinding knife and plate in canola cooking oil to avoid it rusting between use .. would highly recommend this product over an electric meat grinder

My motivation for getting this item was an article about what legally passes for pre-ground beef in the US. I thought I already knew the essential facts, but the article sickened me.

I couldn't face the idea of getting and storing yet one more electric appliance, so I selected this one. I wasn't put off by the reviews that mention industrial oil residue: I just parked it in the dishwasher for a couple of cycles before using. Some reviews of other grinders complain that the cutting wheels and blade are not stainless, but stainless is not a good material for those parts.

It does the job, but understand that time and muscle are required, no matter what you're grinding. I first ground two pounds of aged cheddar for mac 'n cheese, which went OK but would have been faster and easier if the Archimedes' screw-shaft was cut with a more aggressive leading edge. The cheddar coming out of the machine looked like very fat, soft noodles; they worked just fine in the recipe, and it might be fun to play around with deliberately making things in that form as an appetizer.

Next was five pounds of mixed meat for meatballs. My recipe also calls for fresh breadcrumbs so I finished up the session with a few slices of bread. With a lot of muscle applied, it delivered beautifully-ground meat out of the business-end but also a fair bit of blood out of the handle-end, because the shaft does not make a very good seal with the body. It clogged once, requiring me to remove and clean gristle off the cutting faces. No fault of the grinder, but the bread came out extremely compressed and useless.

Something I did not expect: I've been fine-tuning my meatball recipe for fifteen years, and was very happy with it. These meatballs were in an entirely different league, easily justifying the extra time and effort, but they were also rather unbalanced, with the meat now drowning out the parsley, lemon zest and fresh oregano, so another round of fine-tuning is now in order.

To conclude: I'm fairly happy with the machine, and expect that it represents a fair example of its type. I'm looking forward to trying out the sausage-horn, and will update this review when I do. Look elsewhere if you like, but I'd advise staying away from a cheap electric or anything made mostly of plastic: few plastics will long survive the forces being applied here. If I was buying again, I'd seriously consider the TD Industrial Cast Iron No. 32 Meat Grinder

I bought this to cut down on my meat budget. I can buy roasts that are on sale and grind them into ground beef and spend less than is I bought already ground beef. This grinds the meat nicely. The clamp the holds it on the table slip sometimes (which is why I gave it 4 stars), but permanently fixing it to a block of wood solves this. Or just tighten it every so ofter. I will warn first time buyers, meat grinding is a slow process. Occasionally you will have to take the blade off and clean it as gristle does get caught in it, which plugs the thing up. But that is easily dealt with. Also, put some paper towels under it as blood sometime squirts out the side when grinding. But this only happens if the meat being ground in particularly bloody. The meat comes out perfect when ground. I love the fact that now I can get lean ground beef without having to pay and arm and a leg for it.
Set up is easy and clean up is also easy. I do agree with one viewer: grind about 2-3 pounds of meat when you first get this to get rid of the industrial grease that is still on there. After that, whatever you grind should be fit to eat.

..there is a problem meantioned by other reviewers as well. If you don't already have a wooden kitchen table of exactly the right depth to bolt the machine, you will be looking long & hard for somewhere to bolt it to make it stable enough to grind. I've tried using the coffee table (made of wood) and that works but not so nice grinding bloody meat in the living room. Then I tried using a TV table, but the surface is not deep enough so you need an extra piece of wood to wedge under the bolts, and the table wobbles as you apply pressure to the handle. I am still looking for a solution, or maybe I will have to build a small table just for this machine!

Once that hurdle is passed, and it does need to be SECURELY attached to whatever you're attaching it to .. then it will grind meat without problems. You have to keep pushing the meat in with your fingers since there is nothing provided to push it down. And for me, grinding 2-3 pounds would be my limit, sending it through twice, as hand-cranking the handle gets tiring after a while.

But for what I wanted, it works and is a cheap solution compared to the higher end grinders. If you can easily afford it, maybe go for one of the higher end ones, but if you just need to grind up a pound or so of raw meat every so often (and can find a place to attach it), this machine works fine.

I really like the Meat grinder, but have lost the cutting knife and cannot find a supplier that will provide parts. Also would like a larger grinding plate, again cannot find a supplier that handles parts.

I have the Norpro Heavy-Duty Meat Grinder for half a year and I've used it occasionally. It works perfectly and grinds everything as expected. The grinder plate and knife are made of iron (not stainless steel) so need treatment after every use: clean, dry quickly and oil - I use olive oil. I would only wish the clamp opening was slightly larger as in my kitchen and dinning room I can only mount it on the kitchen's built-in cutting board.

It works great, the only thing I don't like it's the clamp's clearance (or whatever it's called the part that you fix the grinder on the table), it's kinda tight... otherwise it's a good purchase.

I am very disappointed with this product and I will probably return it. the auger is very poorly designed. It requires much force to get any thing to actually feed into the grinder and also turning the auger handle requires a lot of force. My previous experience with meat grinders made in America varies widely from this unit. Most well designed units self-feed once the meat product enters the auger and generally require much less turning force on the handle, even with larger units than this one. the finished product is acceptable with the exception that the meat is excessively macerated during the grinding process.
I would not recommend this unit to anyone.

This meat grinder looked like the kind my mother had that worked very well. However,after it was assembled it did not grind beef or lamb chunks evenly, but turned them to mush that jammed the grinder mechanism.

I was looking for a meat grinder for a long time and trusted the trade name; the tool is rusted, does not work properly, I will return it