We both have Kitchen Aid mixers, and over the last few years, have been buying attachments for them which we share. She has the meat grinder and food mill, I have the pasta rollers, and the other pasta maker is on my wish list :)
But the meat grinder is one that I would buy myself if I couldn't borrow Mom's.
Why grind your own meat? It can be safer - store-bought ground meat tends to be the source of a lot of food-borne illness, and it is definitely cheaper, since you can find whole cuts of meat on sale for much less than their ground counterparts, especially meats other than beef. Have you priced ground chicken or turkey lately? Yikes! You can also control the amount of fat that goes in, but one word of warning: you do need some fat, or you'll end up adding oil to your meat to prevent it from sticking to the pan. Trust me on this ;)
I also like the ability to package the ground meat in portions that make sense to me, instead of trying to find the quantity I need for any given recipe at the store. I generally freeze in one pound portions, and seldom have to pull out more than one package for any recipe I'm making.
So, when meat is on sale for a good price, I buy enough to grind some. I recently did 25 pounds of pork (yes, 25 pounds!), and just used up the last of last year's ground beef, so I'll be keeping an eye out for a good beef sale.
Eventually, I want to source all my meat from local, sustainable producers, but I'm not there yet. And for beef and pork, the price of ground is generally cheaper, but I would still save money by grinding my own turkey and chicken.
And once you have ground meat, you can make so many other things...
We so rarely eat ground beef that it's not a real concern, but I've been lusting after a Kitchen Aid mixer and its attachments for ages now. I've been promising myself that I can buy one once we've finished our kitchen remodel and actually have room for it on the counter. And I've been mainly focusing on the model that has the meat grinding attachments.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE my Kitchen Aid. Especially for the attachments! One word of advise: get the more powerful model, as long as it's not too heavy for you to lift. That's actually how I got mine: it was too heavy for Mom to use comfortably, so I bought the smaller model and traded it for hers :) But the more power you have, the easier it is to do certain things, like mixing stiff doughs.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you can a lot, look at getting the food mill (you need the meat grinder in addition to the food mill attachment) - making tomato sauce is a breeze with it! And shop around for the attachments - they can be INSANELY expensive!
Oh, and I forgot to mention - I see you signed up for the Independence Days Challenge! YEAH!!
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