Best budget processing setup for white in a home kitchen

[Drenalin]

I cut up a bear this past weekend with a 4-inch Victorinox paring knife. Everything into roasts and stew meat, but it worked. The only other equipment used was a 120-quart cooler, a couple cutting boards, and a couple big bowls. The bear was skinned with a different knife (a serrated Victorinox paring knife). You should have a sharpener of course, but the Vics held their edges for the whole process.

I have a spare fridge in the garage specifically for what @fishslap showed above; for whatever reason though, my wife had filled it with protein shakes and girl scout cookies. So I used the cooler and frozen gallon jugs of water this time.

I say all that to point out you don't "need" a bunch of stuff to get started. But as I ease my wife and daughter into the idea that I'm going to be cutting up animals at home from now on, I'll damn sure add a good grinder and a way to stuff sausages. I wrapped the bear in gallon size plastic sacks, pushed all the air out, and then wrapped in freezer paper. I've had good luck with this with venison and don't imagine I'll add a vac sealer.

 

[WaWox]

Going to be the contrarian here. I have the #12 LEM and I think it's overkill unless you hunt a real ton of meat and your family mostly wants to eat ground -- be it sausages, burgers, snack sticks, or meat sauces.

When I process a whole backtail buck, I get maybe 5-10lbs of ground. Everything else I prefer as stew meat, whole muscle roasts, bone-in roasts, etc. Even when I process a small pig (say 120lbs hanging weight), I only get 20lbs of ground, my family just loves roasts, chops, bacon, cured meats, and pulled pork too much.

Yes, running 20lbs barely trimmed meat thru the LEM in under 5 minutes for two rounds of grinding is super fun. But did I need to spend $600+ to save, say 20-30min versus a much cheaper, worse, slower grinder? I don't think it was worth it. Even a kitchenaid attachment could have done this if I spent another 30min on cutting some silverskin or sinew out.

This calculation changes if your 80lbs of white tail turns into 70lbs of ground plus the backstraps. Especially if you do it not 1x a year like WA state lets me go after bucks but 2, 3, ..., 6x .. out east.

In terms of other materials:
- Victorinox boning knives, get like 1 flex, 2 semi stiff, 1 stiff, in 6", curved. Look at restaurant supply stores like webrestaurantsupply, much cheaper than amazon
- if you like you can get one longer straight knife, like a breaking knife or just reuse a long chef's knife for portioning
- plastic or better stainless steel tubs
- plastic or better nice japanese rubber cutting boards, as large as you can move around and wash in your sink
- if you do like sausages, get a $100-150 sausage stuffer like a vevor from aliexpress. I'd rather spend $400 on the grinder and $100 on the sausage stuffer than $500 on the grinder and no stuffer, even if I had to grind several whole deer.
- cheap garage fridge for aging meat, some metal grates to place the meat on
- vacuum sealer. ideally don't cheap out on this as the cheap ones will break and have parts that are "consumables" (eg the heatstrip has a very finite life span) but there won't be any replacement parts available. so you end up trashing a $50 sealer because a $1 part failed.

EDIT: get a single Naniwa 200 grit stone from Amazon or sharpening supply and learn traditional whetstone sharpening. Your knives will be sharper than factory-sharp in no time.

 

[WaWox]

Oh another thing. Buy a book on butchery techniques to learn the cuts. I like Butchering Poultry, Rabbit, Lamb, Goat, and Pork: The Comprehensive Photographic Guide to Humane Slaughtering and Butchering by Adam Danforth. Goats/sheep are mostly comparable to deer in terms of cuts and what you can turn them into -- some parts are different, of course, e.g., I'd expect a nice whitetail to have bigger necks, maybe larger hindleg roasts. But it's pretty similar for 100-200lbs ruminants across species

Bonus is if you ever decide to buy a whole or half pig, it will tell you what to do for those too, and while you probably already know how to break down a whole chicken, can't hurt to look over that too..

 

[SloppyJ]

If I'm grinding in fat I feed some meat and some fat and at the end just hand mix a bit, it seems reasonably incorporated. Anything you'd make that needs the fat well distributed probably is gonna get mashed up more later anyways right?

More often than not I don't add in any fat, just depends if I had some in the freezer from smoking some pork butts or such.

Btw why do you feel bad about trimming? Are you seaming out the sinew and such and keeping the meat or just cutting off the portions with the sinew and tossing it? I seam it out which is why I'm such a slow butcherer.

I methodically trim it out as I break out the different cuts. Undoubtedly there's more waste than what I see most people grind. I used to break it out by the seam and really get it all in places like the lower legs where it's bad. There really isn't a ton of meat there on our deer around here so now I just keep a separate pile of that and freeze it. At the end of the year I'll grind it up, add some fat, and make dog food out of it. My sister-in-law has some crazy kind of big indoor cats and they love that stuff too. That's helped me reduce a lot of the little stuff that took a

it makes a massive difference on time. This is my 5th season with the #12, using my very best tricks (chilling, using the tube to make sure the cylinders of meat fit down the throat, courser plate the second grind, etc) the second grind took 8x longer than the first grind. Screwed on the little $140 double grind attachment earlier this month and the meat went just as fast as the first grind used to, but what comes out the spout is double ground.

This is the one to get: https://www.lemproducts.com/product...PbHAA_j0_vPRFQzham4l2Mx_C3cjkCuyDL6P61phK7g2c


My wife and kids complain horribly if the meat isn't double ground, so I havent' tried doing sausage on a single grind. Also, i use a sausage stuffer, not the grinder to stuff casings.

I think I'll check it out. Thank you man. I also use a stuffer but cutting the refreezing step out after the first grind would save a bunch of time for me.

Grab a foot pedal from harbor freight if you aren't using one and add it to your bag of tricks!

 

[ResearchinStuff]

The foot pedal is a must have

 

[NRA4LIFE]

Like others said, don't skimp on a grinder. I went through 4-5 including nearly ruining my wife's Kitchen-Aid (luckily I was able to fix it). I finally upgraded massively to a 1 HP # 22 and this thing is awesome. Grinds as fast as you can feed it. Big cutting boards are great too. I also have a chamber sealer (VP215), 15 lb stuffer, cuber and a few other sundry items. A couple smokers rounds out the gang. I do a lot of meat and fish processing.

 

[TaperPin]

Touch base with your local game processor about grinding your burger. If it’s ready to toss in the grinder I’ve had guys grind, add beef fat, and wrap for almost nothing - it’s one of the quickest and easiest things they can do.

 

[pods8 (Rugged Stitching)]

Going to be the contrarian here. I have the #12 LEM and I think it's overkill unless you hunt a real ton of meat and your family mostly wants to eat ground -- be it sausages, burgers, snack sticks, or meat sauces.

When I process a whole backtail buck, I get maybe 5-10lbs of ground. Everything else I prefer as stew meat, whole muscle roasts, bone-in roasts, etc.

I don't disagree the sentiment you need a BEAST of a grinder is a bit overkill, I've already noted I used that cheap 575w LEM grinder for years and had not issues (I still have it, it never broke), it was just loud. I grind 100+ lb of meat a year for my family but I only typically do 30-50lb at a time. With that in mind a 3/4hp grinder is just fine for my needs and quite in comparison.

Knowing how you use meat it key. I started out with limited ground trying to maximize whole muscle and stew meat, etc. like you are describing but over the years just realized in my personal situation the family eats FAR more ground meat. To the point on pronghorn/deer I literally only keep back straps, loins, top/bottom/eye of round as whole muscle and grind the rest (including the front shoulders) unless I have a specific need coming up for something specific (jerky, etc. planned). With elk I'll keep more larger pieces of meat.

One thing is after I have a batch of ground meat off the first animal of the season to reload the ground meat supply I tend to just freeze 6-8lb bags of trim meat that I can later thaw to grind, make sausage, send out for specialty sausage, etc. Breaks up the task.

 

[pods8 (Rugged Stitching)]

The foot pedal is a must have

Maybe if stuffing sausage? I can't see why it would be needed for regular grinding, I just keep feeding meat through and after 5-10lb if I need to flip the switch to shuffle things around I don't find it inconvenient.

 

[ResearchinStuff]

Maybe if stuffing sausage? I can't see why it would be needed for regular grinding, I just keep feeding meat through and after 5-10lb if I need to flip the switch to shuffle things around I don't find it inconvenient.

I grind it straight into burger bags. Need the pedal to stop real quick and put a new bag on

 

[pods8 (Rugged Stitching)]

I grind it straight into burger bags. Need the pedal to stop real quick and put a new bag on

Gotcha, that situation makes sense.

 

[WaWox]

I don't disagree the sentiment you need a BEAST of a grinder is a bit overkill, I've already noted I used that cheap 575w LEM grinder for years and had not issues (I still have it, it never broke), it was just loud. I grind 100+ lb of meat a year for my family but I only typically do 30-50lb at a time. With that in mind a 3/4hp grinder is just fine for my needs and quite in comparison.

Knowing how you use meat it key. I started out with limited ground trying to maximize whole muscle and stew meat, etc. like you are describing but over the years just realized in my personal situation the family eats FAR more ground meat. To the point on pronghorn/deer I literally only keep back straps, loins, top/bottom/eye of round as whole muscle and grind the rest (including the front shoulders) unless I have a specific need coming up for something specific (jerky, etc. planned). With elk I'll keep more larger pieces of meat.

One thing is after I have a batch of ground meat off the first animal of the season to reload the ground meat supply I tend to just freeze 6-8lb bags of trim meat that I can later thaw to grind, make sausage, send out for specialty sausage, etc. Breaks up the task.

Yep fully agree -- you need to know what you and your family actually want to eat and then optimize for that. Didnt mean to imply people shouldnt buy a grinder or shouldnt go and grind a whole deer -- do what feeds your family! -- just wanted to emphasize that one first needs to think hard and then buy appropriately. (Especially when the thread has budget in title! The difference between a fancy grinder and a bare bones approach is literally more money than a full home butchery setup , cheap fridge and sausage stuffer included!)

So yeah, to original poster: think hard about what you want to eat. And then think about trying more whole muscle roasts,more stew meat etc, see how it works for your family, and if yes you might have just saved yourself a 500-700 purchase!