KitchenCraft Home Made Sausage Maker Machine with Easy Manual Crank, Silver

If I'm completely honest, I purchased this item with very low expectations. I figured that as its so cheap, it must be a pile of junk and I would be buying a dud with a list of faults.This thing is genuinely impressive. It does exactly what you want it to, it's really easy to use as a single person, and it's even easier to use with 2.My son and I made 5kg of sausage in less than and hour. I'm pretty sure that time will be halved in the upcoming months.I'm not endorsed nor am I a company involved person. I'm just SO surprised by this machine.It really is that good!!

This was my first attempt ever to make sausages and since I'd noticed that some meat mincer reviews had comments that indicated that people preferred to use a separate sausage "stuffer", I thought I would try this first before splashing out on a meat mincer/grinder. I'm happy I did because I found it very easy to use. I bought mince (20% fat) and added a variety of herbs and spices and soaked the casings etc. The trickiest part is threading the casing onto the nozzle, but they are surprisingly robust. The sausages came out looking as they should and I did not need a second person to help, it was very easy. The suction cup worked well - it wobbled a little bit on the kitchen bench but worked fine. My only minor gripe is that there is quite a bit of mince left in the nozzle at the very end which I managed to dig out and turn into little patties. Next time I would add a slice of bread or a bread roll - this would then be the last part of the mixture to be squeezed out of the "stuffer" and could be discarded. Or I could simply accumulate little meat patties!I'm so pleased with my efforts I'm like a puppy with two tails! Now I just need to scour the internet to find good recipes for interesting sausages (particularly boerewors) and think about a meat mincer for a Christmas pressie...

Excellent machine does everything that you want and easy to clean

Unusually, the item in hand looks better than the picture on the website. Given it is the most basic proper stuffer you can buy, it really works as well as you'd need for small quantity occasional sausage making. Actually rather fun to use. There is plenty of control with the handle on the screw, and no effort to turn it, even with a coarse grind. The worst bit is getting the casings on the nozzle, and you have to do that with any sausage stuffer.The main deficiency is lack of a washer sealing the piston-head. Expensive models have the piston head sealed with an O-ring, and also have a pressure-release valve. I improvised a washer by cutting a plastic disk out of a polypropylene food carton lid (recycle number 5 PP), very slightly larger than the piston head itself, and that did the job. Still ran very smooth, and no meat escaped behind the piston head.The barrel is nicely milled aluminium alloy of a good quality, and of sufficient gauge it should not too easily dent or become mishapen. But clearly it has no structural bracing and could be dented or misshapen with rough handling, and should be treated almost like glassware. The end caps are not quite as nice, being of rather basic zinc alloy. Those could be brittle, and should also be handled like glassware. The cap threads could easily be damaged by cross-threading, and I put a little oil on them for easier turning. The centre screw is zinc-plated steel. The piston-head is some cheap alloy, and is held on with a steel spring, which will easily go rusty so don't leave it soaking in water for too long. The stand is chrome plate.It says it holds 1kg, but I found 1kg of trimmed meat turned into sausage mix, with no rusk, filled it one and half times. It is a little tedious that you fill it from the nozzle end, so you have to be a little careful when refilling it part way through a stuff, but it was straightforward to achieve. That's one slight irritation you'll avoid with a better model. I was even able to push the last bit of meat left in the nozzle into the casing quite easily using the handle of a wooden spoon to push it down the detached nozzle.I have a smooth worktop and the suction pad held fine, and I didn't need any help from an assistant.It is perfectly possible to grind meat to sausage texture in a food processor, with a little care, if you find out about the role of salt and temperature in achieving that. So this is the only specialist piece of kit needed for small scale sausage making. I succeeded quite easily at the first attempt, with nothing like the panics and disasters of my early attempts of other kinds of "advanced" cookery.

I was longing to make my own sausages but this machine was quite useless and only used once. The plastic part split, the mince eascped when trying to fill the casing, the handle locked into place and nothing would stop it or move it up the spirel partCouldn't push last of the mince down the tube so you end pushing with your hands and finger.Sending it back and buying a better/differant one. this one is cheap and nasty for the price. and for a leaner not very good a poor machine it could put you off making your own sausages

Item arrived promptly but the front plastic bit was cracked up. Haven't bothered to return it-much hassle and possibly costs. I wouldn't buy it for vegetarian sausage making again-the gap between the piston and the inner wall leaks the mixture a lot. Might be fine for meat mixes though.Made of aluminium - not a big fan. Aluminium is soft, and scratches inevitably away the metal into the food.Doesn't stick to any surface, only to very smooth surfaces like plastic or glass tops, definitely not wood as I've got - even it is pictured with that. The description is definitely misleading. The mount comes off easily and indeed slides about as it claims it wouldn't.Bought for experiments, so it is kind of good enough. Wouldn't buy again though.

Works surprisingly well. Easy to use, would recommend