More grunt—uuuurggh

T.P. McPhee

Tim The Tool Man Taylor from the 90s sitcom Home Improvement had it right with his classic tag line, “More power—uuurggh!”

In that context it was a bloke thing but, in the arena of home processing, we are gender neutral and more power equates to a streamlined, efficient and happy kitchen.

Processing the catch or kill in our family has always been a shared activity, albeit clumsy and messy in the past.  Kitchen appliances have a place but prove woefully inadequate when handling bulk.  We tortured ourselves for 20 years with a George Foreman meat grinder, which lapped up the occasional pāua but choked when confronted with a whole deer—it simply lacked capacity.  The game changer came when we went ‘grunty’.

Researching a suitable high-capacity grinder proved difficult on the internet; searches predominantly turned up American products (the Yanks do BIG well) but these are incompatible with New Zealand power sources.  The Rural Butcher Range, alleviates this problem by sourcing and supplying products suitable to the Kiwi market.

We went for a #22 grinder with more wattage and more grunt—a huge step up from George and his piddly 50mm grinding plate and feed.  With an 80mm blade and plate and a larger feeding chute, the transformation was quantum.  What literally took hours is now accomplished in minutes—no exaggeration.  For example, George would take an hour to grind 10kg of meat—the new #22 model has the capacity to grind 250kg in an hour and a smaller but still grunty #12 model can do approx. 150kg / hour!  Recently, we minced 20kg from a couple of deer I’d shot and it took less than 8 minutes.

The bottom line—George lacked the punch.

Advantages of the bigger grinder are:

• easy to clean—large accessible surfaces
• more sanitary—no tight narrow nooks and crannies to trap food
• Better quality of mince—cut rather than bruised
• wide feed means you can cut larger chunks of meat, saving time
• No more cubing meat for mincing
• 4mm, 6mm and 8mm grinding plates creates coarse or fine mince
• Speed and efficiency

Another big advantage to stepping up to a more commercial model is that it paves the way to producing your own small goods, such as sausages and meat patties.  I will cover this in detail in future columns but the essence of successful small goods is multiple grinds, so capacity and speed are an absolute must.  Sausage making can become a fun family ritual rather than a tedious chore, with the right equipment.  But more of that later.

Home processing is fun, rewarding and satisfying.  It also saves you money in the long term but the secret is in the set up.  Buy quality and purchase GRUNT!  The centrepiece of your appliances is a decent meat grinder and worth the investment.