- Today I have a very special guest with me.
Leah.
- Hello.
- Leah is here to help me test meat grinders.
- That's right.
- Leah is a master butcher at The Meat Hook.
Have you had any experience with home meat grinders?
- I have not had any experience grinding meat at home
on an electric grinder like these.
So I'm interested to find out if any of them are worth it.
- So there are a lot of different meat grinders out there
but these are the ones that are the most popular
that are under $200.
So we have the KitchenAid attachment at around $60.
This one over here, the Gourmia, is also around $60.
And then we have the Altra at around 130.
So Leah what's the best test for these meat grinders?
- So we're gonna grind some chuck mixed with some brisket.
- [Esther] Okay.
- Which is at a like a nice 70, 30, lean to fat ratio
which is what you're looking for in a good burger blend.
- [Esther] Okay.
- And then we're gonna, if they do well with that,
we're gonna do like a power challenge round
with some chicken bones that I brought from the shop.
- [Esther] So I think that I'm the most skeptical
about the KitchenAid attachment.
One just because if it's not its own separate gadget,
then it's always a big question mark.
So should we take this apart
just to take a look at the blade?
- Yeah definitely.
So what we're gonna do now is take a look at this plate
and once I pull that out,
you can see that the blade sits right behind that.
I am not feeling super hopeful about this one
because the blade is teeny tiny.
- Yeah it looks pretty small.
- Yeah like maybe half an inch.
- [Esther] Okay there we go.
- [Leah] Okay so we're going.
- So does it make a difference if it's like a higher speed?
- I mean not necessarily.
I think the thing that affects it the most
is making sure that you're feeding
the meat in at an even rate.
- Got it.
- Because if you try to cram too much in there,
it'll get gummed up and then you end up
with like mush or just a really frustrating sort of clog.
- Got it, good point.
- And this doesn't seem to have a reverse button on it.
So we're just like going in.
- Going, you're just feeding it.
- We wanna do it right the first time.
Do you wanna give this a try?
- Yeah if I'm tall enough.
- You can do it, you can do it.
I mean this is.
- Decent?
- Yeah it's decent I mean it's not
as slow going as I thought it was gonna be.
- And so what would it look like
if it's doing like a horrendous job?
How do you know?
- If it's doing a really bad job,
you get really thin strands
of super, super, smooth, pasty meat.
If it's coming out and it's not being chopped by the blade
it's just getting sort of smushed into like a meal almost.
Or if it just gets totally jammed up
and it's not pushing anything out.
That's how you know it's really weak
and not getting much done.
- [Esther] Should we crank it all the way to the top?
- Yeah let's crank it.
Oh my God here we go, okay.
So this is kind of the stringiness that I'm talking about.
When it comes out in like flat little paddles.
Because I think what's happening right now
is the meat is getting ground by that cylinder
more than it is by like the sharp blade.
- The sharp, yup.
- I think you get more done
more efficiently when you just put in smaller pieces.
You're like not smushing so much.
- So in conclusion don't shove
it down there like I just did.
- [Leah] Yeah.
- [Esther] Pretty decent.
- [Leah] Mad decent.
- All right KitchenAid.
Have you ever put chicken bones in a grinder to test?
- We don't encourage it.
But we have done it at the shop before.
People like to do it for their pets.
But we're not gonna do it for you.
We should start out slow.
- Okay.
- Because it is gonna break.
It's definitely gonna be from us trying to crank
it up too high and dropping a chicken bone in there.
- And it just like goes in.
- Gettin' stuck.
- Yeah.
Okay so that piece is like.
- [Leah] Get in there.
- I don't think anything is happening.
- It feels like nothing's happening.
- Do you hear, I don't even hear the bone.
- [Leah] Oh oh, I hear some crunching.
Yeah we've got.
Oh.
- [Esther] It's working.
- It's going!
Whoa.
Whoo.
- So it's working.
It's powerful enough.
- It is working.
(whirring)
Ah!
- [Esther] This is what we were afraid of.
- I think it held its own though for a little while.
Look at how tiny this blade is.
- Yeah for that.
So you wouldn't be able to do like the whole chicken?
- No way.
I think that if this is you know 30 to $60,
and our stand alone grinder is starting at $60,
it might be worth it to buy that one
if it's a little bit more powerful
and the quality of the grind is better.
- Yeah.
- So let's see.
- [Esther] Okay now moving on to the Gourmia.
- Okay this part we'll just unscrew.
Now this is interesting.
This blade is shaped differently than the KitchenAid one.
It's got sort of a curved blade to it
and I'm also noticing that the blade
is about twice as long.
- [Esther] It should be sharper.
- I think it's gonna be better.
I'm gonna turn it on.
You want to drop some meat in there?
- Let's do it.
(grinder whirring)
Oh.
- Oh yeah.
- Oh wow this is strong.
- This is really power, yeah way more powerful.
I think it looks less like prechewed.
- [Esther] And it's fast.
It's like.
- [Leah] Yeah.
- And I feel like the fat is more like intact.
- Right.
Exactly it's not as pre-emulsified.
That was like a fifth of the time
than it took us to do the KitchenAid.
- It was like super super fast and very powerful.
And I feel like it looks.
What do you think?
- It looks much better.
It almost looks like the strands
of the grind are much longer.
The tubes are like staying intact.
Which tells me that it's not like
getting totally smushed up and pasted in there.
- So tubey is better.
- Yeah you want it like kind of stay a little bit intact.
- [Esther] That looks like meat that you would,
a burger that you would get in a shop.
- That looks like a nice little burger.
Like you pointed out earlier,
some of the fat is nice and intact
which is good that's what you want.
And that's what's gonna render out a little bit
and give you your nice juicy burger.
- Chicken bones.
I'm excited for this one.
- I'm excited too.
If that was any indication of how
it's gonna handle these bones,
I think it's just gonna tear right through 'em.
(grinder whirring)
- 0oh.
- Oh wow.
- You didn't even have to use
the plunger on that one.
(grinder whirring)
Wow no problem.
- Oh wow.
- It's chewing these right up.
Cool.
I think it passed.
- Yeah total pass, this is amazing.
- Definitely.
- It's very strong.
- Mm hmm.
- I think for the price?
- I think it's a great deal.
From everything that I've seen
from the quality of the grind to the ability
to power through those chicken bones.
For 60 bucks I think that you're
not gonna find probably a better deal.
Maybe even too good to be true.
- It's the same price as the KitchenAid attachment.
- Right and twice the speed.
- Yup.
- And just I think maybe the sound of the engine
is giving me confidence.
- It's very powerful.
- Yes.
- Okay well we got one left.
The most expensive.
- Okay so you can see this one
has blades on the longer side.
And they are a little bit curved
so I would like to see whether or not
that's gonna have an effect on our grind here.
(grinder whirring)
Whoa!
- [Esther] Oh my God.
This is shaking.
- That's real power.
- Yeah.
- That's how you know.
- Yup yup.
(grinder whirring)
- That sound is very grating.
- Yeah I don't know.
- It doesn't sound nice.
- [Esther] It's fast though.
- It is fast.
I guess you don't have to endure it for that long.
Okay.
That noise really bothered me I have to say.
- [Esther] And this thing's shaking.
- It's high pitched and you're standing right over it.
Which I don't know that's worth.
Also this button,
just feels like it's gonna break immediately.
- [Esther] It's flimsy right?
- It feels really flimsy like it's not gonna hold up
like maybe the whole thing's not gonna hold up.
If that's happening I'm concerned that
the cylinder is hitting up against the walls
of this canister and it's definitely gonna break.
And you might end up with stuff
in your grind that you don't want.
I think that maybe the quality
on this one just like the build,
is not quite as high as the price point implies.
- Yeah the durability is very questionable.
- Definitely questionable.
- So we'll put that there to test with our chicken bones.
- Okay let's do it.
(grinder whirring)
- [Esther] Oh my God.
Although it's working.
- It's crunching right through them.
We haven't touched the plunger at all.
- I smell it too.
Do you smell it?
- It's more like an electrical smell.
- Yeah.
- Yeah it is getting really warm back here.
It powered through those,
it crunched right through those chicken bones.
I feel like it's kind of the same as our $60.
- $60 one.
- Yeah.
- It seems like as far as motor power and durability,
it's on the same level if not lower
than our middle one.
- Yup.
I think all in all,
in the end it's all about the end product.
- I think that the most,
the starkest difference is between
the KitchenAid and the other two.
- Okay.
- I'm not seeing a huge difference in quality
on our $60 and our $130.
- [Esther] Yup it looks very similar.
- Whereas on the KitchenAid you can see
it looks, even though we were using the same blend
of lean and fat, it looks a lot leaner.
I think the clear winner is our Gourmia.
It's only $60.
Like half the price of the other one.
- Yup.
- And I just liked using it.
It felt easy and intuitive
and like it even though it was very powerful,
it wasn't gonna like explode at any second.
So I think that's our clear winner.
- So Leah you've been teaching some butcher classes.
- I have been teaching butcher classes.
With The Meat Hook, you can learn how to make sausage,
and butcher a pig,
and do som basic knife skills.
- Awesome.
The link is in the description.
So check it out.
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