My mom made something she called American chop suey. It was pretty much ground beef, canned tomatoes (mostly our own from the garden), chopped onion, and spaghetti. I never really cared for it growing up, but if you wanted dessert, you had to choke down enough to satisfy mom lol.
The Weston like I have, comes with 8mm, 4.5mm and 3mm plates, 1 knife, a plastic (stuffing) kidney plate, a couple stuffing horns, a stomper that has storage for the plates and horns, as well as an extra spline for the auger.
chopsaw
... Alls I have is what came with my Cabelas .5 hp commercial grinder, also about 10 years (or more) ago ... The one blade gets used on all the plates... Hasn't been sharpened... Still has a nice clean cut and eats up the meat just as fast as I can put it down it's throat...
My jam is 2x through my largest plate, and that's mainly for fat distribution. I don't cube my meat and feed it in long strips when I do it this way. Works good for burgers (leaving some texture), meatloaf, ground meat "casserole style dishes" etc... and if I make breakfast sausage. Grind once, mix in seasoning, grind again to incorporate.
I could not even get it through the 8mm a second time even when the first grind was partially frozen. It almost seemed to be emulsifying and I had to really push hard in on the plunger. Maybe I did not clean the meat good? We will see tomorrow when I grind pork butt.
After the first grind on the 8mm, Chill, mix to get good fat distribution. Then form into turds, for lack of a better word, that will fit down the throat of the grinder. Chill down again and run the "turds" through the 4.5mm plate.
spread it out on a cookie sheet about 2-3" thick, will try the turds. Doing pork butt tomorrow do I do the turd thing with those as well?
Yeah. I usually just cut meat small enough to do 1 pass through the 4.5 (1 inch cubes, semi-frozen, but not frozen solid). If running through coarse then medium plate in 2 passes, smaller chunks from the first grind chilled down in the freezer for a few seems to work best for me.
doing pork butt today, first grind on the 8mm and single pass on the 4mm worked great, I went to regrind the 8mm through the 4mm and the same, gummed up real quickly. The 8 mm was in the fridge for 45 min and grinder parts in the freezer for same. I am going to try your "turd" semi frozen method in a few for the second grind through the 4mm.
Do not put the grinder parts in the freezer. Just chill in the fridge. Think of the little kid that got his tongue stuck to the pole in A Christmas Story.
You'd be missing about 9 fingers if you followed any grinding help I had to offer.
