How To Sharpen Meat Grinder Blades? [Super Easy Methods]

To serve the freshest, healthiest meat to family meals, many home cooks choose to grind meat at home instead of making trips to a butcher.

The only problem with using a meat grinder is that you have to ensure sharp blades to save time and money when grinding food.

How to sharpen meat grinder blades? There are multiple ways to sharpen a meat grinder blade, including:

• Use sandpaper

• Use a belt sharpener

• Use a sharpening stone

• Use a knife sharpening system

In this post, We will dig into detailed steps to apply the four methods above, help you determine when you need to sharpen your grinder blade, and show some precautions and maintenance tips.

Let’s get the ball rolling!

When Do You Need To Sharpen Your Meat Grinder Blade?

How to know when it’s time to sharpen your grinder blades?

There are a couple of signs hinting that it’s time to take care of your meat grinder blades. The most notable red flag is poor grinding results.

A dull meat grinder blade often lacks precision and efficiency when grinding. Thus, the final ground meat tends to deliver a coarse texture rather than a fine texture as usual. 

Related: meat grinder reviews

Another symptom indicating your grinder blade needs sharpening is the clumps of ground meat. When the blade gets dull, not only will it take on its sharpness but also show inconsistency in grinding.

One way to check if your meat grinder blade is pointy or not is to run your fingertip through the blade’s edge. Please be careful to avoid hurting yourself.

How To Sharpen Meat Grinder Blades?

Many people think that sharpening a grinder blade takes complicated steps. Hence, they always look for places that provide blade sharpening services.

It doesn’t make sense at all. If you know how to sharpen a grinder, you can shorten your cooking time and save a lot of money.

Use Sandpaper

Sandpaper is the easiest tool to find

First, you’ll need to arrange the components needed, including:

• 600 and 120 grit sandpaper
• A pair of safety workman gloves
• scrap paper
• A 12×12” mirror or glass sheet
• nose pliers
• screwdriver
• water

To start sharpening, do as follows:

• Keep safety in mind

Safety should always be the top priority. Wear a pair of workman’s gloves to protect your hands from unpredictable accidents. These safety gloves also lend you a firmer grip.

View more: meat grinder vs food processor

• Examine the sharpness level before starting

Check through the sharpness of your meat grinder blades by carefully running your fingertip (as mentioned above) or slicing a piece of paper. This way, you can measure how long it takes to do the job and the bluntness level of your blade.

• Position the blade on the sandpaper at a 45-degree angle and proceed with sharpening in a figure-eight motion or circular.

This position helps you know how you already gain a robust flat surface. Repeat this process ten times at least or until you achieve your desired sharpness.

• Clean the produced particles

After completing that process, dampen a clean cloth and use that damp cloth to wipe out the produced particles during the prior steps.

• Repeat the whole process.

Continuing the above process again will further boost the smoothness. In particular, you’ll push the grinder blade onto your sandpaper again at the same angle and move it in the same circular motion.

• Wash the blade and perform a trial run

After finishing sharpening, rinse your blade under warm water to remove the excess particles during the process. Let it air dry and reassemble your meat grinders.

Now is the time to examine whether the blade gets increased efficiency as expected. Try grinding a scrap paper and see if it exceeds the prior sharpness.

Use A Sander (or Belt Sharpener)

Not many homes possess a sander

A belt sharpener is not widely available in many homes, so this method may not be accessible for everyone. Yet, if you do own one, we highly recommend employing this approach.

For those unfamiliar with using this tool, it’s essentially a knife and tool sharpener using belts of multiple grits to abrade steel. Below is the step-by-step guide:

• Choose an appropriate grit

We advise you to utilize a fine grit for this job as it’s less aggressive and, thus, strips off less steel than a coarse grit. However, if your grinder blade is so dull that it can’t slice any meat and causes the meat grinder to get stuck, consider using a coarse grit rather than a finer one.

• Check and sharpen

Observe the four surfaces of the blade closely and notice ant chips, dings, and nicks. If they’re heavily scratched up, remember to solve it too. After all, our target is to gain a completely flat surface.

Now, it’s time to sharpen. We suggest you move the sharpener to the blade instead of to other ways around.

Work each surface until you nearly eliminate all the scratches. Just keep sharpening to achieve a smooth mirror polish.

• Rinse the blade and perform a trial run

Here’s another tip for our readers: The best time to sharpen meat grinder blades is when you need to use your meat grinders because you can test the result right away after finishing.

Once you complete sharpening, rinse your meat grinder blades under lukewarm water to remove excess steel and particles. Reassemble your meat grinder, run it, and give it some meat to grind.

If you do the job correctly, your manual meat grinder should run smoothly and produce consistent long strips of meat with uniform thickness. If that’s not the case, and the blade still clogs up the grinder, you should revisit step two and resharpen.

Use A Sharpening Stone

The finer the stone, the better the sharpening result

In particular, a stone will help you handle sharpening. Grab a stone that is specifically for sharpening or seems to do the work well.

Diamond stones are more reliable for this method. It’s always advisable to use a fine to extra-fine coarse grit stone for more effective sharpening. Also, a better coarse stone will deliver the desired result within small labor. So, ensure to pick a proper stone.

With a stone on hand, you simply rub the meat grinder plates and blades on it. There is no precise way to rub the plates and edge on the stone. You can move them back and forth ten times for each side.

Observe when carrying out the sharpening process. If the sides get pointy, you can stop. It’s better to sharpen all the hands of the plates and blades to ensure efficiency for further uses.

Use A Knife Sharpening System

A knife sharpening system makes it much easier to do the job

This sharpening system includes two ceramic sharpening stones and comes in different sizes for all types of blades and plates.

The sharpening process is extremely straightforward as follows:

• Dip the stone in water for about 3-5 minutes
• Gently assemble your meat grinder with a proper stone.
• Attach the rings while keeping them mildly loose
• Turn on your meat grinder for around 3-5 seconds.
• Turn it off and continue the process again for either side.
• After finishing the process, rub your meat grinder blades on cardboard to get rid of the burr.
• Enjoy grinding!

Precautions and Maintenance

Aside from knowing how to sharpen grinder blades, learning proper precautions and maintenance will help you guarantee a better meat grinder performance.

• Precautions:
  • Sharpen either side of the plates and blades
  • Another way to check the smoothness of the flat surface is to color the blade with a black marker.
  • Carefully examine if there’s any rust in your blades. Keep them free of rust by applying a little elbow grease.
  • If you’re handling a commercial-grade meat grinder, we do not advise you to sharpen blades at home. It would be risky and time-consuming. Searching for places of sharpening blades and paying money for them is a wiser option.
• Storing:
  • Store your blades by applying a particular spray with food-grade silicone-like LEM. This way, you can kill bacteria and germs.
  • Store your blades in rice for the sake of safety and healthy texture.
  • Spread mineral oils on your blades and store them so that they can deliver excellent future functioning.

Out of all the maintenance methods above, the use of food-grade silicone is the most popular and widely used because of its convenience and feasibility.

Final Note

Ground meat seems to be the most underrated cooking ingredient, but it turns out to be part of many delicious recipes, like Turkey burgers, gluten-free meatballs, sausages, or meatloaf.

As long as you can ensure adequate pointy grinder blades, your grinder is sure to deliver the freshest ground meat strips with consistent thickness.

Provided that you use the right tool and diligently follow our simple guide, there will be no difficulty sharpening your grinder blade.

By understanding how to sharpen meat grinder blades correctly, no wonder you can have a cooking item that will last you a very long time.