LEM Products #10 Clamp-On Hand Grinder, Stainless Steel Meat Grinder

No one tells you how much of a pain in the rear end it is to clean these things, but I would venture a simple hand grinder like this is easier than more complicated electric grinders. Thst said, I bought a manual grinder because my cat hides for almost a half day whenever I use my tiny and quiet vacuum cleaner, so a noisy electric grinder was completely out of the question. The hand grinder is simple, effective, cheap (relatively), and strong enough to handle chicken thigh bones, so it's perfect for me. As a bonus, it takes up less space and the clamp even fits on my 1.75 in thick cutting board if I take the rubber feet off.Now I can make whole chicken raw food for my cat, and custom blend burgers for me!

Nice hand grinder and worth it. After initial cleaning, I used it and did about 3# of meat. It worked out great! Just ensure you have a solid area to clamp it to while grinding.

This review is for LEM Products #10 stainless steel meat grinder.This meat grinder is poorly machined, has sloppy clearances, poor fit of the whole rotating assembly and zero quality control at the factory. The first thing I did was take it apart and noticed burred edges of the screw flaking off; there’s nothing like sharp flakes of metal in your burger! Some of the edges seem to have been de-burred but only about 60% of them. The end plate is an extremely sloppy fit in the rough cast (not machined) bore and the 4 bladed knife part doesn’t fit flat against the plate no matter how much fiddling attempting to make it fit properly and the clearances are so loose that if a sweet spot was found it wouldn’t stay there during grinding. The screw shaft has a taper with a flat machined into it for the handle; but the handle is a very poor fit to the shaft. Again no quality control!When turning the handle there is a noticeable segment of about a quarter turn that is harder than the other ¾ turn. To me this means that only one of the four knives will actually cut anything and sinew will collect between the other knives and the plate making it cut nothing after a few revolutions.This item seems to be shipped for the consumer to do the quality control; to this consumer it fails miserably. For the price I expect a lot better.

As a response to those who say this item jams; you don't know what you're doing. Please realize that you need to remove silverskin and tendons from meat before grinding.To those detracting the carbon steel blade I say learn the attributes of different varieties of steel. What you want is stainless steel, a metal that is difficult to sharpen, wont hold an edge for long, and is costly to replace. What you get is an appropriate carbon steel blade, a metal that is easy to sharpen, holds an edge for an extended period of time, and costs less to replace than stainless. Yes carbon steel needs more care, but it is still a superior product.Enough ranting; what I like is this items simplicity, durability, and its quaint old fashioned look. Its an item that, with proper care, will last several generations. This grinder gets the job done, thats it, a no frills, no gimmicks product that is beautifully executed.What I don't is like the vice. Its small, and doesn't leave many choices as to where you can secure this device. Even though it is difficult to find a securing point the vice is well made, just small, the rest of this product is superb.In conclusion, if you are an artisan cook, a traditional home butcher, a hunter, or a budding culinarian then this is a device for you. If you're a person who needs everything spelled out for you and spoon fed to you, maybe you should just stick to supermarket sausage and ground meats.

The LEM #10 is the standard by which manual grinders should be judged.I tried it out by grinding 5 pounds of boned chicken thighs, 5 pounds of lean pork shoulder, 6 large apples, and 2 pounds of beef fat. The grinding was effortless. Cleanup was quick.I then used the included stuffer attachment to turn out 24 chicken/apple sausages. Stuffing sausages takes so little effort our three year old was able to turn the handle. Cost per sausage was under .50 and they are every bit as tasty as store bought ones costing twice as much.The pork and beef was rapidly processed into italian sausage and kielbasa. Again the price per link averaged under .50 and the quality was great. The LEM #10 effortlessly processed everything we put through it.The stainless body and impeller (the impeller is listed as cast iron on some websites, mine is stainless) make cleanup quick and easy. A tiny bottle brush makes scrubbing the holes on the grinder plates a snap.About 3 hours after receiving the grinder we had a freezer jammed full of premium sausage and the grinder drying in the dish rack.I did have two small dislikes:1) The instructions were much too brief.2) It sits pretty low and requires a shallow bowl to catch the outflow (this is a problem on all manual grinders)All in all I wish I had bought one years ago.