KitchenAid SSA Sausage Stuffer Kit Attachment for Food Grinder
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Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of KitchenAid SSA Sausage Stuffer Kit Attachment for Food Grinder
Customer Review: Good for small batches, needs two people
Summary: 4 Stars
Just made sausage with it, using natural hog casing. It was easy, and not overly messy. I ground the approx. 5 lbs of 1/2 beef - 1/2 pork last night, seasoned it, and rolled the seasoned ground meat into tubes roughly the size of the grinder throat, then covered and refrigerated it. I washed all the grinder, and stuffed the next morning. Process was simple, not too messy, results look reasonably professional. I fried up a bit of the seasoned meat to taste, so I know these will come out tasting good. It took about 1/2 hour to stuff the sausage, and about 45 minutes to grind and season the meat.
After rinsing the casing overnight, I assemble the grinder minus blade and plate, just the bar nut and funnel, and grease the outside of the funnel with oil, slide the casing onto it, and tie off the tip of the casing. Turn the Kitchen Aid onto the 4 setting, and start feeding the meat into the throat. As it first comes out, there are large air bubbles, but these are worked out at the end of stuffing, using a clean sewing needle. Have one person stuff the grinder with the meat, and the other person hold the casing and support the sausage as it leaves the funnel. Squeeze a bit on the casing as the meat comes out, so you don't have overly plump sausage, you want some small bit of softness rather than a taut casing. If you keep feeding meat in consistently, air bubbles will only appear sporadically, and will be small. Put a plate or tray under the sausage, so as more sausage comes out, you can just pile it into the tray. I saved twisting into links for the very end, since I've never done it before. When you get close to the end of the casing, and there's still some on the funnel, stop the stuffing, so you will have some casing to tie off the other end of the sausage. I use household twine. After tying off, you can smooth out the sausage and use the needle to poke out air holes. When the sausage is consistent throughout, make your links by twisting the casing one or two turns at each link, in this order clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise, counterclockwise, etc.
Problems with this product: none. The design, however, leaves quite a bit of meat still in the funnel, but perhaps all sausage makers with funnels have this "defect".
Customer Review: Gets The Job Done Like a Sausage Fest in College
Summary: 1 Stars
After making sausage a number of times with friends, I decided to try it myself using attachments for my KitchenAid stand mixer.
Grinding? Worked great!
Mixing? Worked fantastic?
Stuffing? A giant pain!
I really don't understand the reviews that praise this product, as my experience has been completely different - this is a failure of a product.
Problems with the stuffer attachment..
1) The stomper tool is a joke. It is uncomfortable to use and is too small for the feed tube. Thus, you press the mixture down, and it spurts back up the sides. We're talking 80% spurts back up the side. Another 10% sticks to the stomper and comes back up to the food tray. The result of this is that you emulsify your mixture (combine the fat with the meat into a paste, which ruins most sausages).
2) The auger, which is part of the food grinder which you need to make the stuffer work, fails at drawing the mixture in and out through the stuffer nozzle.
3) Stuffer nozzle is plastic, and mine had sharp edges that I needed to file down because it was tearing my casing. It still tears my casing.
4) The whole thing is plastic. I'm not a fan of plastic, but in many cases, a plastic product can work perfectly fine. This is not one of them. The mixture, no matter how cold I kept it, cotinually clung to the feed tuber, auger, and stuff, increased my emsulsion problems. The instructions say to lube the beed tube with shortening, but this doesn't really work well at all, and you have to reapply the lube each time you use the stomper.
The end result was I spent far longer stuffing my sausage using this attachment than I'd dreamt of. A manual stuffer is far, far, FAR easier and produces a more reliable, tasty sausage.
Sure, I bought this for around $15, and I am returning it first change I get because it is not worth the added time of frustration, ruined mixture, and torn casings. Seriously, don't waste your money on this attachment. If you only want to spend $15, use a pastry bag - it will be much easier than this.
Customer Review: If the goal is to stuff casing with air, this product WINS!
Summary: 1 Stars
The Kitchen Aid grinder attachment is fabulous, but this companion stuffing kit is a total piece of junk. If the goal is to stuff as much air as possible into the casing, then it's a MUST-HAVE! Otherwise, it fails. Miserably. The auger doesn't feed the ground meat through the funnel, so you have to push the meat through the hopper with the wooden stuffer. Of course, the stuffer is about the same diameter as the hole. So when you push the meat through, all of the air get pushed into the casing. You're probably wondering where the air comes from. If the hopper is full, the meat should push through, right? Wrong. Every time you pull the stuffer out of the hole, a vacuum forms and you inadvertently pull air and casing back into the funnel. And you have the added luxury of pulling all of the ground meat back out of the hopper at the same time. So you press more meat through the hole, the vacuum pulls it back out again, and the vicious cycle goes round and round. In the meantime, your casing has become a swollen meat/air balloon that's ready to pop. So you have to poke it with a toothpick before it explodes all over the kitchen like a trichinosis bomb. Eventually, you ram enough ground sausage into the casing to feel like you're making progress. But I warn you, this is Fool's Gold! Don't allow yourself to experience joy! When you go to twist the sausages into links, the meat seeps out through the holes you had to poke throughout the tortured process. By the time you're done, 30% of the filling is splattered all over the kitchen or wasting away inside the auger and your neighbor's kids have learned several new four-letter words.
In short, I advise anyone who wants to make homemade sausage to search for another product. You'll have as much success making sausage with this KitchenAid disaster as you would ramming ground sausage through an old oil funnel with a used toilet bowl brush. Any commenter who says otherwise is probably an online brand manager who works for KitchenAid's PR firm.
Customer Review: Well, I gave it a shot...
Summary: 1 Stars
Despite negative reviews here and assurances in two different sausage making books that this attachment is not the ideal tool for stuffing sausage, the price was low so I gave it a shot. I'll be saving up for a dedicated stuffer. This thing is just too much hassle.
My sausage meat was well chilled--not quite frozen. I am 6'2", so the issue of working height was not a problem for me. Yes, I removed the blade and grind plate. I had no problems with seepage around the stuffer tube. Make sure everything is seated properly and the retaining nut is on tightly and this won't happen.
The big design flaw is the feeder tube on the grinding attachment. Firstly, it is a royal pain in the neck to have to pop the air pockets that constantly build up in the tube. It was easier for me to keep popping my casing to let the air out. Secondly, the plastic plunger is great for loosening the nut on front and for pushing meat into the tube during the intitial grind, but it caused more problems than it solved for stuffing. It created a meat vacuum that, at times, even sucked my casings into the stuffer tube. I had to clean the plunger constantly because several ounces of meat would build up around it's shaft after stuffing just a couple of links. Thirdly, all of the handling I had to perform to finesse the meat into the tube, all of the pressure I had to use to get it to feed through to the stuffer tube, changed the consistency of my sausage. Thankfully, I was stuffing bratwurst and they're all right with a very fine texture, but I think this tool would have ruined a sausage that requires a coarser texture. Finally, when cleaning everything at the end of the ordeal, there was a full link's worth of sausage meat still in the grinder assembly and stuffer tube. It didn't go to waste, but I would have rather had it in a casing than as a patty.
I **LOVE** the grinder attachment, but I will be returning the sausage stuffer attachment to the brick-and-mortar store where I bought it.
Customer Review: worried because of bad reviews, but very satisfied
Summary: 5 Stars
I was a little worried about the attachment because of all the bad reviews but it was so cheap, I decided to give it a try. Honestly, I have had no problems. I think a lot of problems are arising from people not using it properly. Let me clarify a few things.
1) elevation
I'm 5'2", have a tall model KA mixer (Pro 600, bowl lift)) and I can't say it was a major issue. I can still feed in the meat witout any issues. You do have to hold a bowl when catching the meat you're grinding. If you really find it uncomfortable, I'm sure you can find a table (instead of kitchen counter) and an extension cord.
2) grinding and stuffing at the same time = not what you're supposed to be doing
I don't know why people said that, but it clearly is a 2 step process. I don't think you can even properly attach the grinding part and the stuffer part at the same time! You first grind the meat into a large bowl, spice it up and what not, and then you feed the ground meat again with the sausage stuffer attachment. If you read any sausage recipe, you would see that you're really supposed to have ground meat, work with it, then stuff it into sausage casings. If you grind and stuff at the same time, you'll probably have meat leakage (see 3).
3) leakage = none
It seemed to be the main complaint and I honestly did not have any problems with the meat getting out from the sides. The meat comes out in chunks and fast when you are grinding, but when you feed it in grounded it comes out at quite an even rate. My suspicion is that people tried grinding and stuffing that same time. If you do that the grinder's grid and the stuffer will probably be in each other's way (they're not supposed to be mounted at the same time) and cause holes on the side. I wasn't trying to feed the meat slowly or anything and I had absolutely no issues. I made 2 batches of sausages so far (grinding first, spicing it up, and then stuffing) and have not witnessed that problem.