LEM Products #8 Countertop Meat Grinder, 575 Watt Aluminum Electric Meat Grinder Machine, Ideal for Occasional Use

No complaints on this product. Worked well and quickly.

For a home user, I don't need a mega grinder but I worried about a small one not being able to do what I wanted. This little guy is a real trooper and quality item. I chill the parts and tray and the meat prior to grinding. I bought an external foot switch for it which I HIGHLY recommend. If you feed it gently, and chill your meat to just above freezing, it's awsome. I've made hot and mild Italian sausage. breakfast sausage, ground beef for burgers, meat loaf and spaghetti sauce. And ground pork for meatballs. I won't buy ground beef again.Mar 24 2022 update2 months in and I love this item. I've probably done about 25 lbs of meat thus far. I've made pork breakfast sausage using the Con Yeager seasoning from Rural King, perfect. Made Hot Italian pork sausage with Con Yeager seasoning from RK. I've made the Hot and mild It Sausage, we like the hot. Made lots of beef mixes for burgers. Brisket, sirloin, chuck mostly. Home made meat browns better, tastes better and I (IMHO) can cook it a little bit rarer and feel safe as I know there is no offal in it. I've used my ground meat and pork in my bolognese sauce and it improves an already great dish (Anne Burrell's recipe online).A few recommendations:1. You MUST keep the meat and machine cold. Pre cool the grinder parts in the freezer, I put the meat tray in the fridge to prevent sticking. Your meat MUST be VERY cold, almost frozen or partially frozen but not solid frozen.2. Cut meat into 1-1/2 inch cubes or strips. Cubes will keep long strings of gristle wrapping around the grinder shaft.3. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND the foot switch. Only use the grinder in bursts so it won't overheat. See here at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VSF64RM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1. I have NEVER had to use the "Reverse" button on the grinder. It's worked great.4. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND the sharpener here, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078WFX5BF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1. Sharpening the blade and milling the plate flat allow the machine to work much easier.5. After each batch, unwrap any tendon or gristle wrapped around the shaft and throw it away, it'll only be a small amount if you trimmed your beef well.6. For my pork sausages, I use Sams Club pork shoulder steaks at about $2.50 a pound or less. You lose a little bit cleaning off the bone and any tendon, but just about perfect fat ratio without mixing meats.If I keep my meat cold, my blades sharp and don't overload with gristle, I expect this machine will last a long time and grind hundreds of pounds of meat. I recommend this product highly.

Let me start this review with an engineers rant about about choice of material vs design. People in the market for a grinder worry far too much about metal vs plastic gears. First of, neither all plastics nor metals are created equal. For example, in many applications quality nylon, poly carbonate or whatever is vastly supperior to mystery chinese cast metal. Secondly, as long as design and dimensioning is appropriate for the material choice, even a weak material will work for the intended purpose.I've had my grinder for several years now. Its processed well over 20 big game animals, much of it poorly trimmed sinewy meat and well over freezing temperature (worst case scenario for a grinder). The output is perfect and the rest of our processing line is nowhere near able to keep up with it.Looking at this device its quite clear it was produced by a designer that makes professional meat grinders for a living who was tasked to make a more affordable unit that would only produce maybe a thousand pounds of meat a season rather than a thousand pounds of meat a day at a professional locker. It uses nylon gears, cheap aluminum cast for the housing and screw and only quality stainless where it really matters: the knife and the plate. The motor is an ancient twentieth century brushed design that stinks of ozone when fired up. Everything is ridiculously overbuilt and there is no way anything will strip on a properly manufactured and assembled device. It is big and clunky, super noisy, and the parts, while super easy to clean manually, are not dish washer safe, but for seasonal use i feel the savings are totally worth it over a pro-grade device.On a final note, the most common problem with any grinder is clogging due to sinew build-up around the knife. This can happen due to poor knife/plate alignment or because they've become dull, but will quickly be an issue even on a quality device with sharp edges if not assembled right. A grinder cuts by shearing the material between the knife edge and the holes in the plate, similar to a scissor, and just a like a scissor the fit between mating surfaces needs to be tight. As such, when tightening down the aluminum head, don't be shy. There is a happy medium, but better a little on the tight side - practice makes perfect :)

Love this. Just make sure you HAND WASH. I put parts in dishwasher. Needless to say, I had to buy new parts.

I had a KitchenAid brand that worked ok until the housing split. Tried one of the cheap $39.99 Kitchen Aid knockoffs/replacements, it sucked, so I sent it back. Figured this one might work, and boy does it! I just ground ~2.5 lbs each of beef chuck and pork shoulder for meatballs, and it took me longer to trim and prep the meat than it did to grind it, and the texture was perfect (with the small die.) I did not prechill the meat in the freezer or anything, as that's the way I've always done it in the past and wanted a direct comparison. Definitely recommend for someone who might grind 10 lbs of meat per month. Yes, it is a bit loud, but it's a machine. I expect that, and for the 3 minutes or so that it's running, I can handle that (or just turn the music up!)