great kitchen aid attachment
these come in really handy for sausage stuffing, i've also used them to grab off pieces and roll into meatballs for soups and sauces. the price was hard to beat too.
Not bad, the pusher is useless
If you are using this sausage set up, the combo stuffer/tool thing is garbage. Other than this, no problems. I made 50 lbs of kilbasa and 30 lbs of mild link. Ended up just pushing the meat in by hand as the stuffer is useless and more trouble that useful. I am going to make my own stuffer with some solid plastic stock.Follow the directions, 4 setting on the speed is best.
The thing barely works
I usually do my research before buying, and to do this I read the worst reviews. Had I done this in this case I never would have purchased the stuffer.
As many have said, the biggest problem is with the plunger which is not wide enough to fit the chute. Meat squishes up on the sides and sticks to it. The result is overworking & heating the meat which is bad. Unlike others, I had no problem getting the casings on or with them ripping.
I'm glad the stuffer tubes are only a cheap add-on for the grinder so there's not too much down the tubes. The grinder works fantastically.
Bad design, but better than nothing
After reading the other reviews I went ahead and purchased the stuffer, thinking "I only make sausage a little at a time, the size of it shouldn't effect me". Boy was I wrong! The design is really terrible. The top hole is so small that every time you push the meat in you can barely get the plunger out because there is such a strong suction. Also, you can only put the tiniest beat of meat at a time, or when you try to push it down it all just splatters to the side. All those things being said, it does beat doing it by hand.
Plunger is too loose to push sausage mix
The diameter of the plunger for pushing sausage down into the auger is too small. If the sausage mix is moist enough to stuff into casings, it is too moist to remain below the plunger. As you push down, sausage mix oozes around the plunger into the chamber above the bottom of the plunger. This really slows down the stuffing process and results in air entering the auger and your casing. You can eliminate most of the backflow if the sausage mix drier, but this increases the load on the motor and does not significantly speed up the process. The sausage stuffer kit needs its own plunger, one that seals to the inside of the chamber and allows you to push a moist sausage mix without backflow.
