Last Updated Jan 2023 – If you want to grind industrial quantities of meat, pulverize poultry bones, or simply stuff sausage in a jiffy, you’ll want to look at a Weston grinder. Weston’s burly meat grinders are some of the most reliable, effective, and durable models on the market.
There are quite a few models on the market, however, and the competition draws ever closer as technology advances. In order to help you decide which Weston is best for your kitchen and whether or not these meat grinders outperform products from other brands, I’ve taken the time to write detailed reviews for four of the most popular Weston meat grinders .
The machines range from the #22, which can grind a whole deer in a couple hours, to the petite #5, which is best used for stuffing sausage. No matter what you intend on using your grinder for, you’ll be able to find a Weston that does the trick.
Weston Electric Meat Grinder Reviews – Pulverizing The Competition
* Weston Pro Series Meat Grinder
The Weston #22 meat grinder is the gold standard for grinding meat at home. It’s big, expensive, and absolutely fantastic at its job. The #22 can grind 10 lbs of meat per minute with ease. You can grind up to 720 pounds an hour with perfect prep, enabling you to make short work of comically large quantities of meat.
Before we dive too deeply into the numbers involved, let me say this: this is the machine that you want if you grind raw dog food, you make sausages on a regular basis, or you perform any other activity that involves using a meat grinder more than two or three times per year.
The #22 is neither small nor cheap, but the power it provides is incredible. Tasks that formerly took hours will take minutes. Equally importantly, the raw torque and durable parts ensure that the machine simply pulverizes tricky animal bits that might jam or break other machines.
The #22 is powered by a colossal 1125 watt 1.5 horsepower motor. It delivers an impressive amount of torque. This means that anything you drop in the chute gets ground, fast. You’ll notice no slowdown when you feed in chicken bones or tough bits of other animals. A reverse setting allows you to clear jams in the unlikely event that they occur.
Steel gearing is incredibly important with machines like this. Many manufacturers try to save costs by transferring power through cheap plastic gears. This will work fine at first, but after a few months or years of use the gears will bend, warp, and break. Weston uses high-quality metal internals for this machine, giving it a generous lifetime.
Their warranty assures that it will work for at least five years.
There are quite a few handy ease-of-use features on this grinder, too. It’s got a built-in knife sharpener, a handy tray for storing your accessories, and an included sausage stuffing kit that lets you make sausages in 1, 2, 3, and 4 cm sizes. There’s even a handy auger grabbing stomper, an odd tool that makes the task of disassembling this grinder for cleaning suspiciously easy.
The Weston #22 is one of the most powerful home meat grinders available. It does have its limits, however. You won’t be able to grind large bones from large animals like pigs and cows, so you’ll want to do your best to de-bone your beef, pork, venison, and lamb before you grind it. You can definitely grind small bones, however, so letting a small piece through every once in a while won’t matter.
It’s also worth noting that while the Weston #22 is fairly easy to disassemble and clean as far as grinders go, it’s not as easy to clean as a dishwasher safe pan. You’ll want to pop the grinder open and clean a handful of parts by hand in the sink as soon as you get done using it. It’s not too bad – nothing sticks, at least not usually – but it’s definitely a bit of extra work. Again, the #22 is easier to clean than most other options, so this definitely isn’t a downside.
Overall, I would strongly recommend the Weston #22 to anyone who grinds more than 60 pounds of meat a year. If you’ve got multiple dogs on a raw food diet, you’re an avid hunter, or you love to make sausages, the increased durability, power, and throughput of the #22 put other meat grinders to shame. It’s expensive, sure, but you’ll get your money’s worth with all of the time that you save over the next several years.
* Weston #12 Electric Meat Grinder
The Weston #12 is a newer model that’s a smaller, less expensive version of the #22. The motor is about half as powerful, utilizing 750 watts to deliver 1.0 horsepower. It’s still got all of the same precision metal gearing, durable parts, and simple Weston styling.
In general, the experience you’ll have with a Weston #12 meat grinder is pretty similar to the experience you’ll have with a #22. Both machines are loud, powerful, and fast. You can grind about four pounds of prepared meat in a minute, which means you’ll have no problems chewing through several frozen birds or a few dozen pounds of venison in a jiffy.
Other than size and power, there are a couple of minor differences between the #12 and the #22. The #12 doesn’t have a storage drawer, for example, meaning you’ll have to store your spare plates yourself.
Weston’s warranties are somewhat inconsistent. This particular #12 comes with a mere 1 year warranty, while some other models (the butcher series, notably) come with the full 5 years offered with the #22. I personally trust Weston to deliver a high-quality product, and I expect any manufacturing defects to make themselves known within the first 12 months of use. That said, there’s certainly a bit more risk when you choose this unit over the beefier #22.
The big advantage of the #12 is cost.
You save quite a bit of money when you choose this unit over the beefier #22 above. You can still make a few months’ worth of dog food in less than an hour, so it’s still an excellent purchase. It is, however, somewhat less consistent at powering through small pig bones and big chicken bones, so you might have to use the reverse function a little bit more often.
Overall, the #12 Weston meat grinder is a pretty amazing product. It’s perfect for people who use their grinders to make smaller amounts of raw dog food, process moderate amounts of venison, or make lots of sausages. You can use the money you save by buying this smaller, cheaper unit to get more meat to grind up!
* Weston Grinder and Stuffer
The Weston #5 meat grinder is much, much less powerful than the other Weston options. It’s a small, compact machine that’s not designed to handle any sort of bones. While it’s perfect for making sausage and grinding up de-boned meat, its slower operation makes it less than ideal for any household that uses its meat grinder for long periods of time on a regular basis.
If the #12 is a smaller, budget version of the #22, the #5 is a smaller budget version of that. It grinds a mere 2 pounds a minute, which means it’ll take up to sixty seconds to get through a large chicken breast. It comes with a funnel, two plates, and not much else.
While Weston’s other products are remarkable, I’m somewhat skeptical of this particular grinder. Other models boldly advertise their metal gearing and 5-year warranties. The #5 does not. Instead, it’s got unspecified internals and a 1 year warranty. This makes me think that Weston is far less confident in the durability and longevity of this product.
Still, it’s crazy cheap. If you’re not going to be pulverizing poultry or stuffing sausage every day of the week, this little machine may very well do the trick. While it might wear out faster in terms of hours of use, it’ll probably last for several years if you simply don’t use it very often.
Even if the internal components are cheaper and less durable, the Weston #5 still has a powerful motor for the price. It’s cheap, easy to use, and a pretty okay choice if you’re not going to use your grinder a lot. Again, you can save money and use it to buy fancy meats and sausage casings instead.
* Weston Butcher Series Electric Meat Grinder
The Butcher Series Weston #8 meat grinder is fairly comparable to the #12 grinder above. It’s got a 0.5 horsepower motor that takes 350 watts of power and grinds up to 6 lbs a minute.
Like other butcher series options, it comes with a 5-year warranty and is built with carefully engineered steel gears that can stand up to the rigors of grinding meat. The motor is permanently lubricated, meaning you don’t have to worry about oiling it, and utilizes Weston’s signature offset head design to achieve higher auger speeds.
Like the #22, this #8 comes with a special stomper that can be used to quickly disassemble the machine for cleaning. It comes with 3 sausage funnels, a stuffing star, and two grinding plates. This basically means you get a few extra goodies in the box when compared to the non-Butcher Series options above.
In terms of cost and performance, the #8 isn’t too far off of the non-Butcher Series #12. Weston’s ideal performance numbers actually give a slight edge to the Butcher #8, although that could simply be a result of them testing the machines in different conditions. This machine can crunch through smaller poultry bones with no issues and can grind fifty pounds of meat in about ten minutes, assuming you’ve got your meat all prepared beforehand.
The increased warranty length, increased torque, and extra goodies make me think that the Butcher Series #8 is a better buy than the non-Butcher Series #12.
This commercial-style product gives you a superior tool that will probably last a bit longer and grind a bit more powerfully. The only drawback is cost, but the #8 is often priced comparably to the #12 above. Check both units and see if you can take advantage of an online sale to save some money!
While it’s not as powerful as the #22, I think that the Butcher Series #8 is an incredible option for households that grind meat occasionally. It’s great for raw dog food, sausages, hunting, making high-quality hamburgers, and even making your own cold cuts. The incredibly high-torque motor, durable gearing, and added goodies make me think that this is one of the best Westons you can buy, period.
Weston Electric Meat Grinder Reviews: The Best Grinders Around
Weston makes two styles of meat grinders: cheaper, less featured grinders for more casual kitchens, like the #12 and #5 above, and the Butcher Series grinders, like the #22 and #8 above. These durable metal monsters are built to withstand the rigors of commercial use while being affordable enough for home cooks to buy.
While you can certainly get away with the regular Weston models for stuffing sausage, making hamburgers, and other tasks that involve deboned meat, you’ll definitely want a Butcher Series if you plan on grinding whole birds for dog food or being careless with how you debone pork. Not only are the Butcher Series grinders faster and more powerful, they also feature upgraded gearing and a handful of extra ease-of-use features in the box.
Whether you choose a Butcher-style grinder or a cheaper home model, Weston’s grinders tend to beat the competition by a pretty wide margin. Their powerful motors produce more horsepower despite using less watts while their durable internal components ensure that each grinder lasts a long time.
Most importantly, Weston’s grinders are priced very fairly. They’re not cheap, sure, but the cost comes from the high-quality parts and careful engineering, making each Weston grinder well worth the investment. If you’re after a bone and meat grinder, however, be sure to choose a burly Butcher Series grinder like the Weston #22.
