Those old fashioned crank grinders work great. We used one for years to grind up deer meat. If you want the meat to stick together well you can buy a highfat filler from your butcher but you don,t have to add the filler. The downside to the handcrank grinders is they have to attach to a table our counter so If you have a large lip or fancy edge they won,t attach well.

My mother has a meat grinder attachment for her Kitchenaid mixer.

looks like this:

I'll bet that vienna sausages and some hot dogs also have a lot of pink slime in them.

I switched to Nathan's or Hebrew International hot dogs because they are supposed to be made from kosher meat. That way I know I'm not getting any pig snouts or pink slime in them, at least.

un-wholly cow!!!!

I love vienna sausages, (yes, that's my dirty little secret!) but you're right, they have GOT to be full of the odd ear, snout, or other such protrusion.......

will be giving them up. Local grocery store also has bottom round roasts- buy 1 get 1 free!!

Oh meat glue, that's okay the doctor has been telling us to eat 6-8 glasses of meat glue per day.

Will be checking out that link, I just needed to add a chuckle

They use the meat-glue here too. I'm not sure how pervasive it is, but I know they use it in some restaurants to make "fancy cuts" from bits and pieces of meat.

*sigh*

I don't think there's anything wrong with eating an animal from tip to tail. It's what humans always did in the past. It is much less wasteful and all those bits, well, most of them, are edible, nutritious and tasty. I'd be far more concerned about the processing they do to turn them into something that looks like what most fussy consumers think is the only edible part: muscle meat.

i have no issue with tip to tail either and i'm not even close to carnivore or paleo. i do come from a family history of farmers, however. you don't let things go to waste. the issue really is the abhorent slaughtering, handling and processing practices in this country.

I tried the tip to tail eating and couldn't wrap my brain around it. I think it was the pigs ears that I couldn't get right.

Yeah, i honestly would try probably any part sauteed up in some butter. Lips, eyelids, and all.

The pink slime grosses me out too, but they aren't soaking the meat in ammonia, they are using a gas to treat it. So maybe it's safer than we want to believe.

I remember when I worked at an ice cream store when I was a teenager and we cleaned the ice cream machine with clorox water. I thought that was really gross, too, but I guess until morning the clorox had all dissapated and wasn't a threat but it did kill all bacteria. Maybe that is what happens to the slime. Not that I want to eat it either, but it may not be all that harmful.

But I did see a video of a man using "meat glue" to make chunks of lesser grade beef into filet mignon. He said that even most butchers would have trouble seeing that it wasn't what it was sold as. The meat glue that he used was a white powder and he said it was so toxic that he had to wear gloves when handling the meat with it on it. Now, that is really scary to me. So I don't want to buy steaks of any kind from Australia or China.

I bought a chuck steak yesterday, had the butcher grind it for me. Grilled burgers outside til med-rare. It was good, but I think I'm used to a more fatty burger! Too lean for me! I love burgers, even without the bun now, so I guess I'll keep experimenting with whole cuts, freshly ground.

Alton Brown recommends a mix of chuck and sirlon. The chuck will have the fat you're missing.

Those would probably go into sausages. Or be fed to the hogs, dogs or what have you.

Tongue, heart, brains, liver, kidneys, many of the glands, those used to be prized for deliciousness. They're starting to make a come back in fine dining.

Pig ears I saw used in an episode of Top Chef.

the first ingredient on a package of mexican style chorizo was ... lung. the second was lymph node. i wish i hadn't read that. i used to like chorizo...