[Sca-cooks] grinding nuts

[johnna holloway]

Having once done up 25 pounds of marzipan from
scratch in my cuisinart, and having once upon
a time actually used a meat grinder to run English
walnuts through when making canned mincemeat, I can
honestly report that I have no idea whether or not
this would work or not. The factors are that almonds
are very hard and the machines may or may not work
very well. Or they may make a marzipan that is fine
for baking into other things but not the really excellent
sculpting marzipan that one wants for terrific soleties.
And since the ingredients aren't cheap, I'd practice
up on a few batches. You might want to try a quarter
pound in a mortar and pestle as well. Sounds like a
great group experiment night... how many different ways
can we make marzipan?

Johnnae llyn Lewis    Johnna Holloway

Jennifer Whitbeck wrote: Snipped-----
> I have a specific question about grinding almonds for
> marzipan. I will admit that I am, so far, a food processor user.
> Grinding by hand (with mortar and pestle) is a line I
> am not yet ready to cross (kudos to those of you who
> do!!!).Now, I recently picked up a couple of those old, iron
> grinders - that kind that includes a clamp to mount it
> to a counter or table top and is most commonly, YMMV,
> known as a "meat grinder." I got a bunch of other
> "blades" for it that supposedly enable it to grind
> different things to different textures. Some of these
> are labelled. In particular, one is labelled "Nut
> Butters". Does anyone think that could be used effectively to
> create a finer marzipan that what can be done in a
> food processor? Does anyone have any experience with
> grinding nuts in those grinders?  Jennifer