It's here ( doesn't take much to excite me ( too many pics)

[fxsales1959]

After bugging Ya'll to no end I got my Weston #8 from orange box yesterday.
Since I had 2 lbs of cubed butt in the freezer I thought I'd take it for a ride.
1Lb for copycat Jimmy Dean hot patties, cause mama makes me a sausage egg and cheese biscuit every morning.
The other pound was destined to be ground for a mess of biscuits and gravy Sunday morning.
Sorry so many pics. Like I said it doesn't take much.

 

[DougE]

Good little grinders for what they are. It will serve you well.

 

[chopsaw]

You're off and running now .

 

[DougE]

If you ever intend to use it as a stuffer, I don't know how it performs for that since I bought a LEM 5lb stuffer right after.

The general consensus is that grinders suck at stuffing, so in going with the enablers around here, I went straight to a dedicated stuffer.

 

[indaswamp]

SMF should be renamed to "Toys-R-Us"!!!! LOL!!!!

Agree with the dedicated stuffer. Congrats on your first batch. Many more to follow I'm sure. Patties look great!

 

[Fueling Around]

Very Nice!
I make my Jimmy Dean clone in 5# batches (roughly 2 kilograms) and freeze and vac pack in 2 ounce patties.

If you ever intend to use it as a stuffer, I don't know how it performs for that since I bought a LEM 5lb stuffer right after.

The general consensus is that grinders suck at stuffing, so in going with the enablers around here, I went straight to a dedicated stuffer.

The Weston (or KitchenAid) grinders are a challenge for stuffing due to the drop from the horn to the counter that you don't have with a dedicated stuffer. Outside of that hurdle, both grinders stuff sausage fairly well.

 

[gmc2003]

I'm fine with patties. Those look great John

Point for sure
Chris

 

[mr_whipple]

Looks like you're up and running right outta the gate!

 

[chef k-dude]

Good score, especially since the Weston website says they are out of stock.

This grinder actually comes with a "stuffing spacer"

The newer grinder I bought doesn't but it DID come with a Kibbeh stuffer nozzle I haven't used. My old grinder didn't come with a stuffer blade either so I ordered a die/blade just to butcher for one and made this

Using a plasma cutter and rotary files. It worked OK for sausage but I wanted to stuff boudin and all the extra pressure and action from the auger made the boudin more pasty so I ended up buying a 5lb vertical stuffer.

You CAN also stuff sausage straight from the grind too. The recipes have you season and or marinate your meat chucks then grind right in to the casings. Not preferable to me but thats how my original grinder made sausage in the recipe book.

Maybe try a recipe using their instructions and see how it goes!

 

[Hijack73]

I'll tell you a secret about that stuffing plate. When you are too tired to mix sausage for emulsification, 3 runs of your final mix mixed with some crushed ice will do the trick. And it takes about 2-3 minutes per run though the auger and doesn't annihilate your sausage texture into a spongy mess. I made a batch of gumbo sausage last night, my back and legs were cussing me after just cutting the meat and cubing it up and weighing all my spices and whatnot out, so I thought - why not? Worked great. Now just gotta stuff and smoke.

I'll post up a thread after I get it all done. Be a few days. Step one, I added cure to chunks and ground once. Let it get ice cold again - like darn near frozen - which I didn't mean to go that far... and by then the stiffness had set in. So I put the stuffing plate in, mixed in the seasonings, and ran it 3k though the grinder again, adding a bit of crushed ice at each pass. Made life a breeze. Sticky and tacky and the bit I fried up this AM was c'est bon. Still had plenty of meaty texture.