How to Clean a Meat Grinder? [A Detailed Guide]

A meat grinder always brings convenience and helps to save time in your kitchen tasks. However, many homemakers become tired of having to clean meat grinders after use. Your old meat grinder needs better care.

Luckily since you already know the Electric Meat Grinders, we have the best method to make cleaning a meat grinder easy in some minutes.

We’ll go into each step in-depth in the next section. Besides, the compilation of tips in the article can help you keep your meat grinder for a long time in the best status.

The grinder is a common kitchen appliance

Table of Contents

How To Clean A Meat Grinder?
Tips of Maintaining Electric Meat Grinder
Final Thoughts

How To Clean A Meat Grinder?

An electric meat grinder is a functional appliance in every family’s kitchen. They help you quickly grind raw foods like pork, beef, and fish. As a result, food preparation is faster and more efficient.

This appliance is in frequent contact with raw meat. Therefore, cleaning meat grinder is an essential thing. Otherwise, the leftover meat will grow stale. Bacteria will enter and harm the health of your family. In today’s article, let’s learn how to clean a meat grinder!

With just a few simple steps in below cleaning process, you’ve got a clean meat grinder without odors and dirt. As a result, the electric grinders work stably and ensure the health of you and your family. So how to clean a meat grinder?

Step 1: Run a “Cleaning” Food (Bread)

This step is a great innovation to simplify the meat grinder cleaning that many people do not know. You need to prepare a few slices of stale bread. Let’s put them in the blender and start it up.

The purpose of this is to wipe away the grease from the raw meat. Just two or three slices can absorb any oil left in the meat grinder.

If you don’t have white bread, use any porous or neutral food. Asian homemakers prefer to use radishes as a substitute for white bread.

In the worst case, you don’t have “cleaning” food to perform this step; you can skip it. If so, you need to use a chopstick, toothpick, or pipe cleaner to clean the die holes. Alternatively, you can use intense water pressure to clean the die holes manually.

View more: How to Grind Meat At Home

Anyway, running some pieces of bread is the best way to wipe away excess meat grease.

Running bread helps to remove leftover meat from the grinder

Step 2: Power off and Disassemble Your Meat Grinder

Before cleaning the meat grinder, you need to power off the power to ensure safety. You had better wait for the grinder to cool down for about 15 – 30 minutes, then disassemble each part of the machine and clean it.

It would help if you moved your grinder closer to a sink. Let’s take apart the meat tray, the feed tube, and the hopper from the top.

After that, you will remove the inside screw, grinding plates, and grinder’s blade. The ground meat will come out when you unscrew the metal cover.

You should clean all the metal parts. They can be a breeding ground for bacteria and mold if you leave the setting on.

Turn off the power before cleaning the grinder

Step 3: Soak Non-motorized Parts in Warm Soapy Water for 5 Minutes.

Soak all the disassembled parts like the feeding tube, meat tray, and grinder blade in hot soapy water to remove tiny pieces of ground meats.

It is better to make a saturated solution with warm water and a little dishwashing liquid. You can use baking soda as an alternative to dish detergent.

Let’s keep them in warm water for at least 15 minutes. It allows enough time for the solution to take full effect. This solution will quickly remove meat particles and grease from metal parts effectively.

Soak grinder parts in warm water for at least 15 minutes

Step 4: Hand Wash Piece by Piece of Meat Grinders

After soaking in soapy water, you need to handwash the non-motorized parts piece by piece.

It means you will use the sponge to thoroughly scrub the feeding tube, plates, blades, so forth. If there are no pieces of raw meat left, you have succeeded. Be careful with the blades. They can hurt you.

In this step, you do not need to use too much pressure. What you need are little ingenuity and meticulousness. Some parts of the lower-quality grinder can quickly lose their coating if you use too much pressure.

After that, you rinse them off with warm water to remove the leftover food stains.

You cannot let it contact with water for the electric motor, as this will cause a short circuit. It is better to use a small bottle brush to brush away the dirt and food residue inside. You can use a damp cloth to clean the outside of the grinder.

White vinegar is a solution for cleaning the body of the device. The cleaning and cleaning power of vinegar is excellent.

For buttons or hard-to-clean areas, you can use a cotton swab soaked in alcohol to clean.

Clean grinder

Step 5: Hand Dry With A Cloth

It is essential to hand dry all grinder’s parts before any reassembly. That is a warning. The kitchen appliance is very allergic to water.

You need to dry all the parts with a fresh towel and let them dry completely before reassembly. Standing water causes your own meat grinders to quickly rust and even short circuit.

Step 6: Air Completely Dry

Some people dry the blender by hand. However, you should put the parts on a wire rack to dry naturally before assembling them.

You can ensure that all the parts are ready for the next grind in just a few hours.

Step 7: Wipe Down With Food-Grade Mineral Oil

Many people do not know this knowledge before they come to our article. Yes, wiping down with mineral oil is not a critical task but is “highly recommended.”

This tip helps prolong the life of your kitchen equipment. When all parts are arid, use a spray bottle and wipe metal parts with mineral oil. The mineral oil will prevent your meat grinder from corrosion.

Pay attention to the material of the towel. Towels with too hard or rough fibers will easily cause the meat grinder to “scratch.”

It would help if you stored the meat grinder in a dry, moisture-free place. If there’s some sunlight, that’s fine.

You have completed the steps to clean the grinder properly. Proper cleaning of the meat grinder will increase the operating life of the device.

It is the way to help your food be “processed” safely and more efficiently. It is not hard to clean a meat grinder, right? Let’s check out this video to recap the steps of cleaning a meat grinder.

Tips of Maintaining Electric Meat Grinder

Cleaning the meat grinder is just one of the factors that determine the longevity of the device. You need to know and do more than that if you want to keep it working for some years. Here are the ways experts recommend.

Clean the Meat Grinder Immediately

You may be lazy to wash dishes and kitchen devices immediately after use. Sometimes, they don’t even clean them until the following day.

However, it is harmful if you do not clean your meat grinder after use. As a result, the meat residue will adhere to the meat grinder parts. It even stinks and produces harmful bacteria.

It will waste more time and effort cleaning the meat grinder. The tip is quite simple. However, many people intentionally forget it.

Cold Meat Only

The grinding process creates a large amount of heat. Therefore, you should grind chilled meat instead of warm meat or room-temperature meat. You only need to put the meat cold in the fridge for about 2 hours before grinding it.

Grinding meat in cold status keeps the texture of the ground meat more beautiful despite a mess. As a result, the taste is more enjoyable, and cleaning is also easier.

Avoid Grinding Sinew (Tendons)

First, sinew is not suitable for a minced meat recipe. Furthermore, it causes grinding plates and grinder blades to encounter considerable trouble. If you don’t strain the tendons out of the meat, you’ll get a mess.

Sharpen Blade Regularly

The blade can quickly wear out after a few uses. So it would help if you sharpened it from time to time. You may need the help of a jeweler or do it yourself. Be careful as this is not an easy task.