How to clean your grody old hand crank meat grinder « Simple Savvy

Let’s say you have a meat grinder and it’s gross.  Just for kicks, you went out and bought a box of meat grinders off Craigslist, or perhaps you went to a tag sale and there was one buried in a moldy box marked “BASEMENT” in faded permanent marker, so you bought the whole thing for a dollar and ended up with a rusty grinder.  You don’t know where it’s been or how long it’s been there, and you sure as heck don’t want to put some meat down the chute until you clean it.  But how?

It’s easy.  Here’s what you’ll need:

• a grinder
• a potato
• salt or baking soda
• a small bowl
• soap
• water
• vegetable oil

1.  To start, don’t even dust it.  Well, maybe dust it if it’s full of cobwebs and dead spiders and other things.  Or not.  It’s up to you.

2.  Clamp your grinder onto the edge of a table or counter, preferably on something that won’t be damage by the meat grinder’s claws.  I used a wood cutting board on a metal table.  Place the bowl under the grinding plate end of the grinder.

3.  Chop up your raw potato into about 3/4″ (~2cm) cubes and sprinkle them with salt or baking soda.  Feed them into the mouth part of the grinder.

4.  Grind.

5.  After you’ve run through all your potato bits but one or whenever you start to get bored, scrape off the last remnants of potato, unclamp the grinder and bring it to the sink.

6.  Over the sink, take the grinder apart.  Use one last potato cube and rub it into all the grimy crevices of your grinder, including the threads of the bolts and clamps, the handle arm, and anywhere else you can think of.  The potato will dissolve the rust thanks to the scrubbing power of the salt or baking soda combined with the potato’s own oxalic acid.

7.  Fill the sink with hot soapy water and wash all the potato and dust and dead spider bits off.  Dry the grinder pieces with a towel, then let them air dry for another ten minutes.

8.  Put some vegetable oil onto a rag and rub it all over the metal parts of your grinder.

9.  Put the grinder into a paper bag or wrap it in an old cloth and store it in your cupboard.

Fin.

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©2012 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where the twelve-year-old in me giggles at the thought of a Climax brand meat grinder.  Hee!

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Tags: clean, grinder, meat grinder, tutorial