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How to use a manual meat grinder? This question can be quite weird to ask as electric meat grinders are gradually being replaced for the manual ones thanks to its convenience and efficiency.

However, many families are still using the traditional meat grinders, which require the use of power from human hands to operate the machine. Today, we will together learn how to grind meat manually so you can try it at home. Keep reading!

How To Use A Manual Meat Grinder?

Clean the meat grinder

Before grinding the meat, you should clean the machine first. Because sometimes many people forget to clean the grinder right after using it. Therefore, perhaps there will be a considerable amount of excess meat stuck inside the grinder for a long time, so it is crucial to make it clean.

Detach all the parts of your grinder and clean it with warm soapy water. You should pay more attention to some essential parts like blades, grinding plates, and tubes. Rinse them off entirely and let them air dry before assembling them again.

Secure your meat grinder firmly

Unlike electric meat grinders, since we have to use the force on a hand-operated meat grinder, we need to fix its position on a flat surface like a table surface.

Prepare meat before grinding

What you need to do now is trim away all the tendons, fat, cartilage, and bones from the meat. Do you wonder why we have to remove these things?

Well, these excess things are so hard to grind, and they can clog up your grinder. Removing them will avoid both the hassle of grinding the meat and the difficulty of cleaning the machine.

After that, you need to cut the meat into smaller pieces with a length of 3 to 5 centimeters. That way will make sure they all fit into the grinder.

Put the sliced meat in the fridge and leave it there for about half an hour. The goal is to allow the pieces of meat to become cold and hard but not allow them to freeze because the frozen meat is hard to grind and can damage the blade.

This step reduces the risk of a piece of meat being clogged in the head of the grinder, especially useful when the meat has a lot of fat. In addition to supporting the effect of grinding, it also ensures food safety when it limits the possibility of bacteria.

Start Grinding

Prepare a large bowl and place it below the exit end of the grinder machine to collect ground meat when it falls out.

Start turning the hand crank on the grander slowly and steadily meanwhile drop the first piece of meat into the mouth of the machine. The blades will pull the pieces of meat down and then crush them.

You should put each piece of meat one by one in the grinder. You are using your strength to operate this manual machine so you can’t put it all at the same time, like an automatic one, which will overload the grinder.

In case you do not trim the meat well, the tendons will build up inside and create the mushy textures, which prevent the grinding process.

If the piece of meat is clogged, use a chopstick to push it under the mouth of the grinder. Never use your hand to press it down into the cavity if you do not want to be injured.

Sanitize the grinder after use

We have finished grinding the meat. Congratulations! However, do not forget to sanitize the grinder after use.

After you have finished grinding the last piece of meat, grind two more pieces of moist bread into the blender. They will act as sponges to clean up any remaining meat in the machine.

Once again, dismantle the grinder and wash off all the remnants to keep the machine clean and ready for the next time.

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Conclusion

It is relatively simple to learn how to use a manual meat grinder. If you only have to grind a small amount of meat, then using a hand-operated blender is quite easy and fun to experience at home!