Lakeland Manual Meat Mincer & Sausage Maker Machine – Fine & Coarse Mincing Blades

I rarely write reviews but I had to for this machine as I love it! After my faithful old Kenwood finally bit the dust I didn't have a mincer. We went on for a while without but I did miss shepherds pie made with minced leftover roast lamb. I bought this and wasn't sure how much hard work turning it would be as I'd never used a manual mincer before.It's a breeze! Some reviewers have questioned the suction pad efficiency but as they refer to a 'switch' and this model has a knob to turn I think it must have been upgraded. No need to dampen the worksurface and it didn't move once. Easy to clean and pack away and the shepherds pie was proper comfort food.Easy to store away in its box. Great value for money. Well done Lakeland. The plastic parts did worry me a bit although they aren't flimsy. The machine minced the carrot and onion that went into the pie with no bother.Lovely to have the sausage filler too - need to get out my recipe book for those again.

I have a heavy duty mincer/sausage maker and bought this mincer for the convenience of smaller jobs. I wasn't expecting it to be brilliant, but it turns out the device is easy to use and clean, efficient and not subject to any of the problems pointed out by those giving it a poor review. After a few months I'll updtae - either pushing the review up to 5 if it continues to work this well, or reducing it if things start to go wrong.So far, though, so good.

Tough little unit, does what it needs to do and best of all it's easy to clean

This is a colourful, easy to assemble, mini, plastic mincer. Unfortunately the suction is applied by flicking a lever on the base. The grip which this provides does not last long so I found that one has to stop, flick the lever back and forward again to restore the suction and keep the mincer from sliding on the table or worktop surface while it is in use. This made mincing 350 grams of beef quite a long business. If I was buying another small mincer I would get one with an old-style clamp that fixes to the table.

We bought the item as Lakeland are a pretty well known company - the first one was good until we couldn’t take the blade off to clean; it was stuck fast and several strong men couldn’t move it! So we returned it for a straight swap with the same item, which came with missing parts and leaked meat blood from where the handle goes when you used it.I find it hard to believe it coincidence that two of the same item could have issues.

great mincer with suction padgood for turning leftovers into rissoles

The blade is the most important component, and you get a very nice stainless steel blade which you can sharpen up with a tool sharpener, quite easily as the surface to be ground is flat. There is enough adjustment in the front (green) screw-on cap to adjust to some wear to the blade. Bit confusing to start with that the cap has a left-hand thread.Once I realised not to overtighten the front cap, I no longer had problems with the sucker coming unstuck. It ground more quickly when there wasn't so much friction of blade on plate. No trouble grinding some quite tough cuts at fine setting. Expect to take 10 mins or so per kg.I was a bit worried the plastic screw might wear, as happened with an auger juicer I once owned, but I'm not seeing any sign of that. The consequence of some slight looseness in the screw is that a little meat can be left in the mincer barrel at the end, but it is a small amount.I find this grinder makes a much more suitable grind for the sausages than using my food processor. That resulted in rather tough sausages. But I've not used it for sausage stuffing, because I have a purpose-made manual sausage stuffer, which is much better for that job.Cleans easily. But it's quite a 3-d jigsaw puzzle getting the pieces back in the box for storage.

I’ve only used this device once so far, but annoying issues are already evident. This is my second plastic food mincer and it proves to me that it’s next to impossible to make a device robust enough to mince anything remotely tough if you use plastic. As usual with anything you buy that needs assembly, the instruction sheet is inadequate: there are infuriating pitfalls putting the thing together which clearer instructions would have obviated. As others have noted the suction is inadequate. You have to turn the suction on using the tool that pushes the stuff you’re mincing: if it’s greasy cooked meat the operation is virtually impossible and you end up with a slippery mess. That said, the device does mince very well - even tough cooked pork, but it’s a fraught struggle. The suction lever has apparently failed altogether on my first try - it seems to be dependent on all components staying aligned - but with soft material to mince holding the thing down by hand gives a reasonable result. The device does mince very well and consistently - even tough cooked pork. It’s well designed and for softer foods it may be ok. Washing the parts by hand is advised, so no dishwasher convenience. With so many problems evident after just one mincing session, and with the suction lever already (temporarily?) inoperable, I’d strongly recommend on old-school metal mincer with a clamp. This thing is just too flimsy.