Do you like delicious cutlets , pancakes with meat and other dishes, where you need minced meat? Then you probably have a house on the farm manual or more modern, electric, meat grinder. As you know, inside it are knives, which cut the meat into smallest pieces. Although they differ from ordinary kitchen knives in shape, they have one thing in common - both of them are dull with time. From this, the easy process of grinding the meat turns into a grueling pushing of each piece into the device. This picture is sad and, no doubt, is familiar to everyone. The only way out is to carry knives for a meat grinder to sharpen or learn how to sharpen them yourself.
The device of meat grinder knives
To understand how to properly sharpen knives for meat grinder, you need to know the principle of their work. As you know, there are two knives inside: one stationary (does not rotate), has a round shape with holes, and the second is equipped with two or more blades with sharp edges. When the product is fed by a screw under pressure inward, it rests against a stationary knife, it is partly pushed into the hole, and the rotating knife cuts off small pieces in a circular motion. While the knives are sharp, they fit very tightly, without a gap, but over time microscopic burrs appear that create a gap. It is for this reason that the tool for sharpening the knives of the meat grinder must have a perfectly flat surface. If you sharpen inaccurately and on an uneven surface, you can break its plane, and then the knife will become unusable. Therefore, before you sharpen the knife yourself, think about whether it is worth doing without the appropriate skills.
How to properly sharpen knives?
The grinding machine, or rather the grinding of knives for a meat grinder, has an ideally flat grinding wheel abrasive surface. On it put polishing paste with the smallest fraction, only then polish knives. But where can you sharpen knives for meat grinders at home? To do this, you need a kitchen table, paste for grinding the valves (we ask in any autoshop) and fine sandpaper. The surface of the table is slightly moistened (so that the sandpaper does not slip), we smooth the paper from above, apply a little paste on it, and our improvised machine is ready. Now you need to have patience, because you'll have to grind for a long time. We put the knife on the sandpaper and smoothly start it polishing. The process can be considered complete when, looking at the knives on light, they will not be scratched. Do not forget that you need to polish not only a knife with blades, but a round one with holes, too. After all, only with the ideal state of both surfaces meat will be cut by them well. It should also be noted that even if you did everything right, the quality of the home sharpening will be much inferior to the machine. It is for this reason that it is better to sharpen knives
Manufacturers write about meat grinders with self-sharpening knives, assuring that they do not require sharpening, but is it so? In fact, knives that do not blunt, do not exist. There are models where knives are forged and very sharp, they serve an order of magnitude longer, but you can meet them only on expensive professional equipment, the purchase of which for home use is simply not rational.