Mincer Knives / Blades

Mincer knives or mincer blades as they are sometimes called are an extremely important part of a meat mincer or mixer grinder. The mincer knives are seen as a consumable item and are to be thrown away once they lose their sharpness. If you continue to use the mincer knives when they are blunt then this prevents a tight cutting action between the knife and plate and means the meat is not cut cleanly, resulting in a mushy minced product.

Mincer knives come in different shapes and can be bought from various different manufacturers, each manufacturer has it own theory into which type of knife is better or worse than others. Some mincer knives have a straight cutting edge, some have a curved cutting edge and some have the curved cutting edge running the opposite way. All manufacturers claim that their method produces a better cut, but to be honest Elite Food Machinery Services doesn’t find an advantage of one system over the other. The main specification of a mincer knife has to be its build quality, the better the build quality and grade of metal used the longer the knife will keep sharp, this combined with the type of mincer plate you use will give longer or shorter life time of your set.

NB. Mincer knives and plates are worn the most when the machine is first started and no product is running through the machine. The mincer knife and plate are therefore grinding against each other (metal on metal) and wearing themselves down, once the meat is coming through the knife and plate the fat in the meat helps to lubricate the cutting action and prevents wear and tear. To get round this problem SFM would suggest keeping a small container of veg oil next to the machine to lubricate the mincer knife and plate when they are put back on the machine after cleaning, this will lubricate the cutting set for the first few second until the product makes it way through the machine.