KitchenAid FGA Food Grinder Attachment

 I’ve had a KitchenAid mixer for nearly 15 years and love it. I never bought any attachments for it, because I assumed they would be cheap gimmicky things that wouldn’t really work. Not true with the grinder attachment. We like our hamburgers cooked outside over charcoal, and ground chuck is the best meat to use for that. I used to be able to buy ground chuck at the stores in my area, but lately all I find is 80% lean mystery meat. When I ask at the butcher’s counter for ground chuck, they insist on pushing the mystery meat at me, because it’s the same lean/fat ratio. NO – I want chuck – because of the flavor as well as the lean/fat ratio. I’ve been going to the expensive specialty market and paying top dollar for chuck, then getting the guys at the counter to grind it for me. Despite a store policy of providing custom butcher service, the young kids that work behind the counter resent having to do anything beyond slapping meat on a scale and wrapping it in a piece of paper. I got tired of the eye rolling and decided to start grinding my own.

I’d started doing some looking online and reading reviews of various products. I hesitated to buy the KitchenAid attachment because of reviews that complained of metal in the ground meat, repeated clogging, etc. I was about to spend a few hundred dollars on a big countertop professional device, when I decided to start with the inexpensive KitchenAid and then make the bigger investment if I was dissatisfied. I’m so glad I did that.

Right after this delivery arrived, the chain grocery store near my house had a good meat sale and I was able to get boneless chuck roast for a fraction of the usual price. I bought the three largest ones in the case (approximately 13 pounds total) and brought them home, anxious to start making hamburger patties.

Here are the steps I followed:

1) I followed the directions, and the advice of other reviewers and did not crank the blades down too tight. I never found any metal shavings or stains in my ground meat.

2) I decided to test my new grinder attachment using less than optimum conditions, just to see what it could do. I cut one roast into strips that were one inch wide and several inches long, and also cut some into cubes that were a little more than one inch x one inch. I felt that I should probably trim off the harder gristly bits of fat and the silver skin before I ground the meat, but decided to just throw everything in (as I’m sure they do at the store). I used meat that was refrigerated, but did not put it into the freezer for an extra chill.

3) I filled the tube and tray with meat, and started pushing things through as fast as they would feed. The attached video was taken within a minute or so of when I started grinding.

4) It seemed that the cubes fed through the tube better than the strips, so I did not cut more strips.

5) The refrigerated meat fed without any clogging at first. Because I kept it on the counter as I worked, it started warming up and didn’t feed as well. At that point, I stopped and finished cutting the rest of that first roast into cubes – a little larger than 1″ x 1″, but not too big to feed through the tube. I tossed the cut cubes into a stainless restaurant bowl and put them in the kitchen freezer, which was directly behind where I was working. After a few minutes, I grabbed a handful of the meat that had started to chill, and started grinding again. The cooler meat begin feeding again very easily, and the rest of the grinding worked very well (except as noted in the next step).

6) About this time, I had my first clog. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, so I UNPLUGGED THE MIXER, left the attachment on the mixer, unscrewed the cap, and removed the grinding plate and blade. Behind the blade, I found what appeared to be a ring of hard rubber. At first, I thought there might have been a gasket of some sort that had come loose. I eventually realized that it was silver skin that had fed through, then got trapped behind the blade and had been formed into a perfect ring by the rotating worm. I removed that, then started grinding again. When I got to the second and third roasts, I removed any large pieces of silver skin, but didn’t spend a great deal of time getting every bit of it. I had one smaller clog, just as I was finishing the third roast. I also noticed along the way that a few bits would not entirely feed, if they had tougher bits of hard fat and gristle. I then started cutting off the obvious chunks of gristly hard fat as I cut cubes.

7) I ground the meat into the KitchenAid mixer bowl. Periodically, I emptied the ground meat into a stainless restaurant bowl in the refrigerator to keep the meat cold.

8) When the grinding was complete, I started making patties. When I make only a few hamburgers, I prefer to make patties by hand. When I make a large batch, I use a patty press. I made big (approx. 1/3 pound) patties with this batch. I pulled about two pounds of meat at a time out of the refrigerator, and started making patties. I use the waxed sheets sized for patties that restaurants use. I place a sheet in the bottom of the patty press, add the meat, add a top sheet, and press. I then turn the patties easily out of the press with no sticking, and stack them on a cutting board on the counter. I made stacks of three or four patties, then transferred the stacks to a cookie sheet in the freezer.

9) I let them freeze for a few hours, then used the FoodSaver to seal the individual stacks. This lets us pull out just enough for my husband and myself, or a larger batch for a a family cookout.

In summary …
a) Don’t screw the cap on too tight and you won’t get bits of metal in your food.
b) Use cubes rather than strips, but don’t worry too much about keeping them down to 1″ x 1″.
c) Keep the meet in the freezer (or at least the refrigerator) as you grind.
d) Remove chunks of hard fat/gristle, and bigger pieces of silver skin.

This has worked so well that I plan to buy the sausage maker and pasta maker next.

Where to start… I read people having metal shavings in their food, but I thought that was an operator error and went ahead and purchased the grinder anyway. Boy, was I wrong.

Bottom line: if you need extra iron in your diet, look no further, this is the product for you. For the rest of us, stay far away. It just sucks I’m 2 days over 1 month return policy… I’d give zero start if it was an option.

I love this attachment, originally purchased to make sausages and grind chicken. As you can see from the photos it does a descent job for a low price. Now I waited til I could get a new one for less than $40. Like many of you I read so many reviews saying that black pieces would show up in the finished product. I am glad that is not true, this is likely due to doing a thorough hand cleaning prior to use (please read the manual before using and do not use a dishwasher). Other buyers could have also had a bad product.

To any one that wants to buy this with the intention of making sausages my recommendation is to buy the grinder and sausage stuffer kit separate when they go down in price. I purchased both for $44.98, just be patient since I Amazon will likely continue selling these attachments.