Grinder Plates and Knives: Replace Them in Pairs

For a #12 grinder, buy the BOLEXINO plate set: three grind sizes, a stuffing plate and two knives, all stainless and hubless. It is the only kit here that covers coarse, burger and sausage grinds and gives you a spare knife, which matters because a knife and a plate wear as a pair and should be swapped as a pair.

For a #22 head, buy the Food Service Knives 3/16 in. plate with the Smokehouse Chef #22 knife twin pack. The plate is reversible — two sharpened sides on one piece — and the knives come two to a box, which is how a heavy season should be stocked.

Why you replace the pair, not the blade

Grinding is a shearing action between two flat faces. The knife spins; the plate does not; the meat is cut where they meet. That only works while both faces are flat and sharp and held tight against each other by the ring. Put a new knife against a worn plate and the high spots on the plate hold the knife off the surface — so the auger pushes meat through the holes rather than cutting it, and what comes out is smeared paste with the fat separated out of it.

This is not our theory. LEM's own product page for its #10/#12 knife tells buyers to change the plate at the same time as the knife. If a grinder has started producing mush, the cheapest honest fix is a new knife and a new plate together, and that is usually a fraction of the price of the grinder.

The six, side by side

Which hole sizes you actually need

Two plates cover almost everything a hunter grinds. A coarse plate around 3/8 in. for the first pass, which breaks the muscle down without heating it, and a 3/16 in. plate for the second pass, which is the size that gives burger its texture and the size most sausage recipes are written around. Our grinder plate sizes guide has the full hole-size table and what each one is for.

Where the kits differ is which half of that range they cover. BOLEXINO spans both — 3/8 for the first pass, 3/16 for the second. The Smokehouse Chef #12 set is deliberately coarse: 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 in., which is chili grind and first-pass territory, so it is an addition to a fine plate rather than a replacement for one. On a #22, the single Food Service Knives 3/16 in. plate assumes you already have the coarse plate that came with the grinder, which almost everyone does.

Fit is the whole risk

Plate numbers describe a family, not a guaranteed interface. A #12 plate is nominally 2-3/4 in. across and a #22 plate 3-1/4 in., but notch style, hub style and the knife's centre hole all vary between makers — which is why BOLEXINO's listing asks buyers to check the size before ordering, and why the VTurboWay #12 knives state outright that they do not fit LEM, Cabela's or KitchenAid heads.

Before you order anything, take three measurements off the parts you already own:

1. Plate diameter, across the face. This is the number that has to match.
2. The notch or hub — whether the plate has a locating notch on its edge, and whether it is flat on both sides (hubless, so reversible) or has a raised boss on one.
3. The knife's centre hole, and whether it is square or keyed. The Food Service Knives #12 knife is a 1/2 in. square; the VTurboWay is 12 mm square. They are not the same hole.

If you run a LEM, the shortcut is to buy LEM's own knife and plates and skip the measuring. LEM does note one exception on its own site: its stainless #10 hand grinder takes its own parts, and standard LEM knives and plates will not fit it.

When to replace them

There is no hour meter on a grinder, so use the output. A set that cuts cleanly produces distinct strands that fall apart in the lug. A set that has gone produces a continuous ribbon that holds its shape and looks wet. The moment you see the second thing on cold, well-trimmed meat, the pair is done.

At the Ohio Division of Wildlife average of about 52 lb of venison per deer, a three-deer season is roughly 157 lb through the head, and a six-deer season about 313 lb. A home grinder set that is kept dry and sharpened will go several seasons at the lower figure. At the higher one, buying knives two at a time — as the Smokehouse Chef #22 pack is sold — means you can swap mid-session instead of finishing a deer with a blunt blade.

Keeping the set sharp

Three habits do most of the work. Dry the parts immediately rather than leaving them wet — several of the plates and knives here are stainless, but drop-forged carbon knives will spot. Store the knife and plate as a matched pair so the faces that bedded in together stay together. And trim silver skin and heavy sinew out before it reaches the throat, because wrapping is what rolls an edge over.

Sharpening is possible and worth doing before replacing, as long as you keep both faces flat; our how to sharpen meat grinder blades and plates guide covers the method and the point at which a part is past saving. The full clean-down routine is in how to clean a meat grinder.

What we judged these on

Four things, in this order: how clearly the listing states its fit (diameter, notch, centre hole), what the maker publishes about the steel and its treatment, whether a plate is reversible or a knife comes in a pair, and value for the number of usable faces you get. Nothing here is a test result — we do not run a bench — and every figure above comes from the maker or seller documentation cited under Sources.

One thing we deliberately did not score: brand. A plate is a piece of machined steel, and a listing that states its diameter, notch and hardness treatment is more useful than a famous name that states none of them.