Buy 😉 STX INTERNATIONAL STX Turboforce II “Platinum” W/Foot Pedal Heavy Duty Electric Meat Grinder & Sausage Stuffer: 6 Grinding Plates, 3 S/S Blades, 3 Sausage Tubes, Kubbe, 2 Meat Claws, Burger-Slider Patty Maker – Black 🔔

2 reviews for Buy 😉 STX INTERNATIONAL STX Turboforce II “Platinum” W/Foot Pedal Heavy Duty Electric Meat Grinder & Sausage Stuffer: 6 Grinding Plates, 3 S/S Blades, 3 Sausage Tubes, Kubbe, 2 Meat Claws, Burger-Slider Patty Maker – Black 🔔

1. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   L. Booth – March 17, 2017

   >.. I have been reviewing Raw Diets for my dogs. The butcher usually supplied me with ground trimmings as pet food, but announced that they would not be grinding again until Summer. So I was forced to evaluate my desire to feed them the ‘right way” for me, or go back to the food they really wouldn’t eat, which is what got me looking at real dog food, in the first place. Since my butcher wasn’t going to be grinding, I would have to or pay out serious money for prepared frozen B.A.R.F. food elsewhere.>.. This machine seemed to have the power and all the pieces needed, six plates, 3 blades, foot pedal, and some serious power. I read all the reviews, I watched YouTube, and I bought it. Hard to find recipes as Dr. Becker’s book is out of print, and is offered here for $188.99 from a reseller [used]. So more research. Decided on a recipe.>.. 20 pounds of meat, organs, vegetables, supplements, and eggs with shells later, I was delighted with my machine. It plainly states with BIG pictures how to place the blades against the cutting plate, and I did. And it worked the first time. I changed plates to regrind, and found that I needed to clean deeper into the exit chute than I expected, but once I did, it all worked perfectly again for the second finer grind. [I used the two largest plates with holes, not the wagon wheel or the beaner plates, they have other uses.] I have not ground bones yet, that will happen with chicken or rabbit (we have a pet supplier here in my town), but not with turkey or bigger bones. The directions are very clear: chicken, duck, or rabbit bones are OK, Turkey, lamb, goat, or bigger are too big for the machine, and voids the warranty.>.. Now to the cleaning: Hot soapy water cleaned everything easily and spotlessly EXCEPT the cutting plates. They stained, possibly from acids from the meat. The stains resisted brushing, and scrubbing, so I accepted that they were discolored like a knife that has been etched to reveal grain, but it was not that pretty. They are fully functional, and when I called my Brother-in-law who uses his machine every year to make venison sausage, he said his plates were stained too and not to worry as long as they were CLEAN, which they are. I used coconut oil to coat the metal parts, including the carefully washed threads. and packed it away.>.. One thing I wanted to know, and no review here said was: how long did it take to make roughly 3 weeks of food for the dogs? Well, the meat was cut up and frozen before, it took about 2 hours to thaw. So I started at 2:30 in the afternoon, and with mixing in supplements grinding the vegetables, adding in the eggs, shells, jellied bone broth with turmeric and ginger, adding the other supplements and mixing it all up to even out the distribution of all that extra, then regrinding, and packaging in one pound bags, it took me 2 and 1/2 hours. Could it have gone faster? Oh, yes. I was looking for things, I had to grind in stages as I didn’t have a big enough container for all the meat at once. Now, I have a much better idea of the process, I expect to be be faster in the future.>.. Next time Chicken! Easter is coming, maybe lamb. And turkey is cheap in the off season. I wonder how many turkeys come in a case? And I know where to buy a goat! The dogs will eat well!>.. 3/20/17 Update: I found a way to reduce the time before I got into it again. I ordered a 2 inch sausage tube, and some meat bags. These come in 1 pound, and 2 pound sizes, and I am told can be forced to hold more, so 1/2 kilo in a 1 pound bag or 1 kilo in a 2 pound bag seems reasonable. How does this save time? The horn can be mounted after the size plate is placed over the cutting blade, and all secured by the locking ring. So the second grind goes out of the machine into the premeasured bags directly instead of into the pan to be weighed and bagged later. Depending on the bags you get you can close them with a tape dispenser or smaller hog rings [need pliers or dispensing pliers for these]. The heavier bags, like I bought, need the hog rings to close like most 1 pound ground meat chubs in the store have. I think I could cut easily 30 minutes off my time with these bags, horn, and closure device. I found all of these on Amazon by searching for the meat bags.>.. Update 4/11/17: there is no #12 match for this machine. The grinding plates and locking head are called #12, and they are close, but not the same, a bit smaller. I found this out when I ordered the #12 2 inch horn from a different supplier, it did not fit, and STX does not make such a horn. THE ANSWER: I just used the largest stuffing tube to fill the meat bags, instead and it worked fine. I did not try to send the dog food through the grinder a third time, I just put the tube on the machine for the second grind, and let the force of the grinding fill the tube and the meat bag at it’s own pace. Keep everything COLD and all went well. It certainly did speed up the processing and eased the storage as well. Dropped 25 1.25 pound bags into the freezer, in orderly rows cross stacked for the upper rows, and it stores as nice as one could ask.

2. 

   Rated 4 out of 5

   Dean Buzzell – October 21, 2022

   Got to be honest here – really good, durable meat grinders with the power to process a deer or buffalo in one sitting cost about as much as a car payment. And that’d be fine if you have need for something like that. I don’t – maybe a half-dozen times a year, and 20-30 pounds of pork butt at a sitting, so spending $400 to $3,000 on a meat grinder doesn’t make sense. That said, however, I also don’t want to fool with something that I have to jump through a bunch of hoops just to make a few sausage links.I looked pretty carefully at the reviews for this reasonably priced unit, and felt the overall mix of good vs. bad were enough to give it a try. But knowing how these devices work, I wanted to give a really hard look at all aspects of it before actually using it to grind meat.Packaging – “complex jig-saw puzzle” is a fair comparison here. I like to store food processing equipment back in their original packaging between uses to keep everything as clean and pristine as possible. Putting this device and all the trinkets that came with it back in the original packaging is somewhat challenging. The throat and stomper require precise placement in order get the box to closed. I get it that this likely isn’t a big deal to most folks, but I don’t have a dedicated area I can set this up and leave it on my counter, so being able to easily put things back into the original containers for storage is a pretty big deal for me.Documentation – I liked this. A lot. While extolling the virtues of their product, the manufacturer also took pains to call out the device limitations and caveats. They addressed the need to thoroughly clean and dry the steel grinding plates to prevent blackening in pretty good detail. Which leaves me baffled that so many people complained about that very thing in their reviews. Also touched on was the need to let the machine ‘take a breather’ after so many minutes of continuous use in order to prevent a thermal overheat shutdown. The manual gives a pretty comprehensive description of how to most effectively use the machine, and what you can’t do with it. While not offering a LOT of detail, it did describe each piece contained in the carton, and gave a brief overview of what each was for and how each was used. All-in-all, a pretty good user manual.Add-ins – sometimes the number of add-ins is a red flag, especially when there’s a bunch of stuff that doesn’t really relate to the device. I guess I don’t really understand why those nasty-looking meat shredders are included with a meat grinder. Seems a bit superfluous. But the rest were good. There are a number of special-use grinding plates, which I like a lot. While not the heaviest-duty, they’re certainly adequate to my intended uses, and appear to be well made. Three knives were included; most other machines I looked at included just one knife. The sausage-stuffer tubes seem to come standard with every meat grinder these days, but truth be told, they’re kind of worthless for stuffing sausage casings. There’s an interesting-looking attachment that it turns out is used in making stuffed ground meat thingys; gonna have to give that a try one day. Finally, the foot control. This is kind of a big deal. For one, it pretty much keeps you out of trouble with overheating. It’s a BIG help if you’re stuffing sausage casings right out of the grinder. It’s kind of a poor set-up, though. You plug the foot control into an outlet, then plug the grinder into the back of the foot control plug. Its cord isn’t all that long, so you may wind up needing an extension cord. It was BARELY long enough in my case.Grinder/throat/stomper/tray – The stomper is a pretty important piece in meat grinders. It needs to be sturdy, as it takes a lot of abuse, shaped so it fits the hand nicely, and fit tightly into the throat to keep things from squishing past it. This stomper isn’t any of those. It’s a fairly lightweight, hollow plastic that is sized to store the grinding plates inside and has a plastic cap, so it’s big enough that it won’t fit anyone’s hand easily. It works well enough for strips and chunks of meat; haven’t tried it yet with ground meat to see if it’s tight enough to prevent already-ground meat from squishing past it. The tray is lightweight aluminum, but quite sturdy and fits the throat tightly enough that I’m not worried it’ll fall off when it’s loaded down with meat. The throat seems sturdy as far as molded aluminum goes, and the auger and clamping flange are hefty, but also lightweight molded aluminum. As I mentioned earlier, the plates and knives (there are 3) are well made. As the manual points out over and over, none of these components can go into the dishwasher. They all need to be washed by hand with a good anti-bacterial dish soap and dried with a hand towel before storing things away.The plates/knives generate heat while operating, and this heat easily transfers to the auger and throat during continuous operation. To compensate, you need to partially freeze the meat before beginning, and it helps a great deal to put the assembled throat/auger/knife/plate mechanism into the freezer as well. Being frozen didn’t seem to have any effect on how well the machine actually ground the meat, it DID seem to have a significant impact on the motor; getting just a LITTLE too much into the auger at one time really made the motor struggle. Not so much of a problem if you keep the feed rate fairly slow, but then you’re dealing with thawed meat after a time.The control buttons don’t have a clean, crisp feedback to them. The toggling mechanisms for the buttons work well enough, but they have a sticky, mushy feel to them.All-in-all, I’m satisfied JUST enough for me to conclude this machine will fit my needs for sausage making and to keep it. I don’t have any issues with cleaning the components after use; I’m well familiar with the need to wash them by hand with anti-bacterial dish soap after each use, dry them thoroughly with absorbent towels (no air drying!), and oil them for storage (good, stiff bottle brushes work well for cleaning the throat, auger, and plates). I use olive oil or grapeseed oil, but any food-grade lubricant should work equally well. I also wash off the oil from when I stored it last, and apply fresh just before each use. As to the motor struggling…well…like I said earlier – buying a meat grinder with enough mojo to power through the toughest cuts of meat and more than just chicken bones comes with a bigger price tag than I’m willing to spend. We’ll have to see how well it holds up over several uses.