A couple of earlier threads got me interested in making my own sausage, and I wandered across the meat grinder attachment for Kitchenaid mixers on sale, so I picked it up (they didn't have the stuffer attachment though ).  It's been collecting dust for about a month, but last night a picked up some chicken thighs on sale and decided to give it a go.

I cleaned up the chicken first, then ran it through the coarse blade.  I was going to dice up some green onion and parsley and run it all through again, but I liked how the chicken came out after the first run, so I just ran the produce through the grinder then mixed it all together in the bowl with some other seasoning.  Cut the tops off some green bell peppers, filled halfway with the ground chicken, and into the oven at 425.  When the chicken was done and the peppers were starting to blacken on top, I put a Minibel cheese on top of each, then broiled them until the cheese just started to brown.  Once done, the skins peeled right off the peppers, and they were really tasty.

The grinder worked great.  The chicken went down the feed tube no problem, I expected to spend a lot of time pushing chicken down with the rammer, but never even picked it up.  Not sure if I committed some sin by just running the whole veggies through it, but they fed great and really added some great color and flavor.  Cleanup was super easy.  It added very little time to the overall prep.

Can't wait to get a sausage stuffer now, I'm really happy with the results and ease of use.  Last year I stuffed a ham in a pumpkin then steamed the whole thing (Ham-o-lantern)...this year I think I'll stuff smaller pumpkins with different ground meats and veggies and do the same.

I dislike the Kitchen aid grinder, since there is no barrier between the internal grease and the grinding mechanism, and newer ones have fairly common complaints of having gears break and getting metal in the meat...

Internal grease?  Gears?  

Dude, it's just like a manual meat grinder, and instead of a crank handle it uses the mixer.

unfortunately, for the non-professional series of kitchenaid stand mixers (artisan series mainly), they are made with a gearbox that contains plastic gears. the gears can easily be stripped when working with thicker substances that put tension on the gear teeth. i've never heard of "metal in the meat", especially since the gears are made of plastic....but I can certainly attest to the stripping of the gears.

the professional series of the kitchenaid though is made with the metal gear box, and is supposed to be a workhorse that just doesnt quit.

My only complaint with the kitchenaid meat grinder has been when grinding beef.  If you don't partially freeze it first (after cubing it) it doesn't feed well.  Also, there tends to be some nasty looking discoloration of the meat where it gets smashed against the cutting plate in the middle of the feed tube.  There ends up being unsightly chunks of grey nasty meat coming out once in a while.  I just pick them out, but it's enough of a nitpick that I won't routinely grind my own beef.  I do have the sausage stuffer attachment, but haven't used it yet.

I can accept that as a valid critique of the mixer itself, but I'm really just discussing the meat grinder.  There is no way for gear metal to get into the meat.

I'll have to watch for that when I try beef.  My wife doesn't eat cow very much, but she likes a good pot roast, so I'm kind of interested in the idea of some kind of beef sausage with chunks of potato, onion, and carrot that I can slow cook.  I may add some minced beef to the ground for that...the coarse grind on the chicken came out finer than I expected.

I have heard the bit about needing to freeze beef before grinding it, which is why the fully-thawed chicken surpised me when it fed so well.

I grind and mix sausage in my food processor and then run it through a manual stuffer.

The fantasy of metal gears in the meat is nothing but that....fantasy.   I have a tilt stand 250W mixer that is about 20 years old now.  

I never do less than 10 pounds of pork and recently did about 50 pounds of pork and beef.  I no longer stuff sausage, but it did an effective job of that too.

Recently I have been using the pasta making attachments.  

Being an engineer, and having seen how these are manufactured, you would not be able to get any gears in the meat if they broke, because it would simply stop and not push any more meat through.  I saw no plastic gears during the assembly process.  Try that fantasy on a treadmill.

eta:  I have never had to freeze meat to run in the grinder.  I bring it home from the store, get busy, and grind it up.  I try to cut the meat into long strips for the most continuous feeding.   If I do a seasoning and second grind, I mix up crushed ice in the meat to keep it cold, but I would debate that is largely unnecessary, since I end up having to pick out the ice chips during the process.

I've ground hundreds of pounds of meat with my KA grinder and never had a problem.

But I think the sausage stuffing attachment is pretty weak. Hard to explain, but the design really clogs up the process.

But the grinder is great for making ground meat, meatballs, homemade sausage, etc.

When using the KA stuffer, I grind the meat, season and mix, and then grind a second time using the stuffer with casings.  It worked amazingly well, and I can't imagine a manual stuffer working any better.

I got my wife the Professional 600 mixer and she loves it.

I went with a refurb direct from Kitchen Aid and it was cheap and has been great for 4 years now.