It’s been a while since I’ve written any blog posts of substance, other than my 2017 daily logs. I found myself with some extra time on my hands today and nothing to do (That never happens!) so I thought I’d sit down and blog.

Yesterday we bought a meat grinder attachment at Kohl’s for our KitchenAid mixer, a mixer that has maybe been used a handful of times that you could count on one hand with fingers left over. By the way, we have TWO mixers – one that we bought and one that was a free gift!

I figured this grinder would end up in our pantry where all the other attachments and gadgets go to collect dust, but John immediately wanted to try it. We stopped at the butcher shop on the way home and picked up a bottom round roast to sacrifice to the grinder. The roast was $25.

We started by making four hamburgers which were quite yummy. We kept them simple by only adding some seasonings. No onion or anything else. We used only half the roast which made four large burgers. We have two left over!

We stuck the other half of the roast in the fridge intending to put it in the crock today. But I thought some homemade meatloaf sounded good instead. So we ground up more today for the meatloaf and then used leftover chunks for a stew.

Big whoop, right?  You could just buy ground meat and call it a day.  Yep, but I actually stopped buying hamburger meat about a year ago because of the price.  A pound is about $7.00 on a good day at our local grocery store, what used to be about $4 or $5 when I bought it on a regular basis.

So we switched to ground turkey some time back which is about $2.50 a pound. We don’t eat a lot of meat at home other than chicken and using turkey in chili, spaghetti, burgers, and meatloaf was a nice alternative for us. If you season it properly, it’s very good and also very lean.

So right away, the first big plus of buying the grinder is saving money because we can buy larger cuts of meat at the butcher for less and stretch it for more meals. Second, the meat is much leaner and we know what’s in it. The burgers and meatloaf had no grease to drain! One thing I always hate about making meatloaf is having to clean the pan after we’re done. I usually let it soak for a week in the sink. Not this time!  It wiped cleaned and nothing stuck to the pan.

I also kind of like the nostalgic aspect of it. Growing up, my mom used a metal grinder that you attached to the side of the kitchen counter to grind up tomatoes to make juice every summer for canning. I’m anxious to see what else we can do with it later this year after we start harvesting things from our garden. I’m so going to try to make my own meatballs and am already looking for a cool sausage recipe.

Do you have a meat grinder?  If so, what do you use it for?