ok..thinking about processing my hog and deer meat..my wife has a kitchen aid mixer..any tips on what plates and attachments to buy for chili meat and hamburger..i used to hand grind meat when i was in high school..but thats been 45 years ago and my memory has failed me..lol i guess i can buy the stuff from amazon..also what kind of seal a meal..would i get..they have lots of brands..bags..different sizes..any help would be appreciated

did the kitchen aid come with any grinding plates? if memory serves me, we had 1/4, 3/8, 1/2 and maybe a 9/16 diameter hole plates. the larger were for chili and the smaller were for hamburger/various types of sausage. The kitchen aid will probably work for smaller portions of grinding. We had a much larger grinder when we were doing all our own processing.

a vacuum sealer is worth it's weight in gold when processing your own!!! I think we have a FoodSaver brand ... but just make sure you have access to buying replacement bags or rolls of the bag material. We also double seal all of ours.

I usually run my hamburger twice once on the large holes , while mixing in some beef or pork fat, then through another size, depending on your taste for size of hamburger meat. I also like my chillie meat not to course.

You may be better off buying a stand-alone grinder over the Kitchen-Aid grinding attachments. The standard Kitchen-Aid attachment is plastic and will run you about $65. For a little bit more you can get this one (http://www.gandermountain.com/modperl/pr...r&i=1028919) and get metal parts, stuffing tubes and a motor that is designed for grinding vs mixing.

I have heard mixed reviews on the kitchen aid grinder attachment, some love it some hate it. Depending on how many animals you process a year, you can pay for all of your supplies/equipment in the first years savings.

We have a commercial grade grinder that ran us $400-500 a crank stuffer old antique been in the family for long time. That is the big stuff of equipment you need but a vacuum sealer can be nice as well. We could buy a grinder stuffer and vacuum sealer for about $1,000. It would cost us more than that to have the 10 to 15 deer we process a year done.

I looked into those too few years back, decided not to. Went out got the biggest 1 HP meat grinder i found at the time, was a little costly, but never looked back! made my life easier to work when processing any wild game! ground up 2 deer last winter, hamburger, and some pan sausage in matter of few hours. Little hand work, but was worth it in long run.... buy extra meat cutters or blades for your grinder..... a little piece of copper bullet fragments were in the meat i caught one in the grinder, broke off part of the blade on one of them.... glad i had a back up...... try not to get any of that meat from neck shoot i made..... but hate to discard good meat..... it was hidden.....

thats my take on meat grinders.....

hunt safe....

I use a LEM 1/3 hp Big Bite grinder. It's all you need to do a deer or batch of sausage. It will grind venison and pork as fast as you can feed it in. I suggest a 3/8" plate for course ground chili meat.
For sausage, I suggest a vertical crank stuffer, like the LEM 5 or 10 pound. If you get a horn type stuffer, make sure the plunger has a rubber seal around it. Some cheap ones do not and leak a lot of meat.
This year I bought a Foodsaver Big Game vacuum sealer. Can use 8" or 11" rolls and works great. I would suggest one of their Gamesaver series because they have a high duty cycle so you can package a lot of meat without stopping.