How to Sharpen Meat Grinder Blades

It is not uncommon today to have meat grinders in your homes or restaurants. Presently, a total of 71% of the population in India is non-vegetarian. Following the same notion, the world percentage reaches a total of 83%. If we look back in time; meat grinders were hand-cranked, and the meat was made to lie over a metal plate with several fine holes. This setting would result in elongated, lean filaments of meat. With time, these hand-cranked machines became powered through electricity. Alongside moderately powered grinders for domestic applications, commercial meat grinders became a thing. These robust counterparts are rated to grind thousands of pounds of meat per hour.

But, just like maintaining any other kitchen appliance, it is required that we sharpen the meat grinder blades frequently. To have a superior functioning from this appliance, you ought to sharpen its blades frequently. The reason behind it is to make the job easy for an individual. But even after much improvements; people find it hard to accomplish the goal of sharpening meat grinder blades correctly.

This is primarily because they perceive the steps to be very complex and complicated to follow. Therefore, it is quite a head-wreaking situation for them. I know, this makes no sense! But that’s how things turn out for some people. Here, in this article, I’ll help you through your difficulty of sharpening meat grinder blades with easy-to-follow steps. Closely follow along and learn how to follow a meat grinder blade all on your own.

Step 1: Prepare the Necessary Items

The first step involves the preparation of essential items for this whole procedure to work. These are essentials in terms of their utility. These are some tools that you must have before you start with sharpening your grinder.

It would be better to have a pair of rubber gloves, a cloth (a clean one), a screwdriver, a sheet of glass, a glass of water, a few needle nose pliers, sandpapers (around 4-6) and a few layers of scrap papers. I believe you should go to 120 grits. Now you must be wondering why this one, right? It will be apparent to you once you finish reading this article.  

Once you are done finding these items, you now require a flat surface for sharpening the blades. This surface needs to be stable and robust alongside being flat because this procedure would require you to put a lot of pressure on it.

Once, you have the surface ready, lay down your glass sheet on it and use the clean cloth to clean the sheet at least twice. The dry cloth won’t work, so make sure it is a little damp for this purpose. The surface should not drip any water altogether, so don’t make it completely wet. Also, once you wipe the glass sheet, put the 120-grit sandpaper on the glass sheet. The sandpaper should be of the same size as that of the glass sheet, so bring them accordingly.

Curious about why to wipe the glass sheet with the damp cloth? This would help the sandpaper in settling down on the top of the glass sheet so that you work better on it. So now, with the first step carried out; we can start with step two in this procedure.

Step 2: Remove the Grinder Blade

The next step involves disassembling the blades from your grinder in order. This step requires your attention because once you clean up the grinder, you have to assemble it back again later. Now the question is how to avoid confusion during the assembling process. In my opinion, you can undo all the parts on a paper separately and mark them all with a number or an alphabet.  This will help you a lot when you assemble the grinder again, once cleaning is done.

Such tips come after having used the grinder and facing the same issue over again. Since I encountered it, I am sure other people would also face it. Hence, if you feel you might find it difficult to assemble it back, you can use the method suggested above. In case any meat pieces are visible; you can use a piece of paper to wipe it away. Once done with this, we can proceed to the last and the most crucial step in this whole process.

Step 3: Sharpen the Grinder Blades

With the final step in tow, you now will require your rubber gloves. You must keep in mind that this item should not be forgotten. Otherwise, you may face a lot of problems.

Wearing the gloves will help you protect your hands from any cutting incidences and will also ensure firmer grip on the blades while holding them.

The next step involves testing the sharpness of the blades before starting the process. You can use the blades to slice a vegetable, a fruit or anything that you can find as per your convenience. This can help you judge the sharpness of the blades currently.

Once you are done sharpening, you can repeat this step once more to see the efficiency of your work on the blades.  

After testing of the blades, you now need to press them on the sandpaper that you have. You should make sure that the angle between the two is of precisely 45 degrees. To put more efficiency to the sharpening process, you have to move the blades in a circular motion. The sharpened blades would be excellent.

But the results take time, so be patient. Repeat this same process at least ten times for best results. Any less than that would bring you disappointment, so you have to keep doing it until ten rounds. Once you complete them, you can test it on any vegetable, fruit or even paper.

Believe me, it is easy to do so.

With this step complete, you would be required to use the cloth to remove away all the litter and dirt around. But you will also be required to put the blades in warm water and rise them after a few minutes. This would eliminate any more dirt particles on them.

You also have to dry the blades after rinsing before installing them back. Otherwise, the grinder would suffer damage in the future. In the end, remember to clean the whole grinder for further use.

Conclusion

This procedure is not painful to follow, but proper attention is necessarily required for the process to be successful. I hope this article helps you and you can prepare your favourite dishes without facing any problems.