[Sca-cooks] [OOP] KitchenAid question

[Maggie MacDonald]

At 03:03 PM 2/5/2006,Volker Bach said something like:
>Hi
>
>I assume that a collection of such avid cooks as you will include a number of
>KitchenAid owners who can help me here. I was given the full set of fruit
>press, veggie grater and meat grinder attachments by my mother (insert happy
>hamster dance), and I'm wondering if either the grinder or the grater are
>suitable for making nut butter / almond paste. Will the grinder stand up to
>being fed almonds? Peanuts? Sesame seeds? Is the grater disc fine enough to
>powder almonds?
>
>Any advice appreciated
>
>Giano

I have the vegetable slicer, and the meat grinder.

I _once_ tried to grind coffee beans with the meat grinder. It was very 
bad, and very ugly, and luckily nothing broke.  The entire affair seized up 
and made bad noises.  Perhaps if I had turned it on then proceeded to feed 
in the beans it would have turned out better?  (I had poured them in, then 
flipped it on).  I've done bread crumbs with _very_ dry bread in the meat 
grinder, and it was alright, but I wouldn't do very much or for very 
long.  The one experiment with a non-stale bread to do crumbs was a bad 
experience too, it started seizing up and making very bad noises. I don't 
know if sesame seeds would be such a good idea though, there's so little 
moisture in them, that I'd be afraid of things getting seized up and/or 
overheating.  Peanut butter sounds like something best done in a food 
processor in the cuisinart style, and the same with sesame seeds.

That being said, there's so very many other things you can do with those 
attachments.  Imagine 50 lbs of onions needing to be sliced for a feast, 
that slicer will go through them so quickly that you'll not even have a 
chance to get teared up (much).  I've made sausages for 150 at feast (two 
kinds) from scratch, using that meat grinder.  Grinding the meat was a 
breeze, but stuffing the sausages with the add-on tip wasn't very fun, it 
was just too slow for that. I ended up doing a McGyver thing with a hand 
cranked meat grinder and a special made tip, that made the whole affair go 
much more quickly.

Enjoy it!
Maggie