Grinder and Sausage Stuffer Combos: Which Ones Actually Stuff Well

The best grinder-and-stuffer combo is the Weston #12 Electric Meat Grinder & Sausage Stuffer, because it is the only machine here designed for both jobs rather than sold with the parts for the second one. It has a reverse, a slow speed specifically for stuffing, and a manual that publishes both a run limit and a warranty term. If grinding is the bigger half of your season, buy the LEM BigBite #8 instead and treat stuffing as a bonus.

Before any of that: a combo is a compromise, and we would rather say so up front than sell you one. A grinder stuffs by pushing meat through its auger a second time. A dedicated stuffer uses a piston and does not touch the meat's structure. Our stuffer vs grinder tubes page makes that case in full. This page is for people who have read it and decided one machine is the right trade.

The three specs that separate them

“Comes with stuffing tubes” tells you almost nothing — nearly every grinder in our catalog does. These three tell you something:

1. A stuffing plate. A blank plate with one large opening that replaces the grinding plate so the meat is not cut again on its way into the casing. Without one you are re-grinding your mix.
2. A slow speed or a reverse. Stuffing wants a steady, slow feed and a way to back out a jam. Grinding wants speed. A machine with one setting is doing one of those two jobs badly.
3. A published run limit. Stuffing takes longer per pound than grinding, so the maker's duty-cycle figure is the one that bites first.

Why the stuffing plate matters most

This is the spec that separates a grinder that stuffs from a grinder with tubes on it, and it is the one most listings bury. When you stuff through a grinder head with a grinding plate still fitted, the auger forces your already-ground, already-mixed sausage through a cutting plate and a knife a second time. Two things follow: the fat warms and smears, and the texture goes pasty.

A stuffing plate is a flat disc with one wide hole. Fit it in place of the grinding plate and pull the knife, and the auger becomes a pump rather than a mincer. LEM includes one with the BigBite #8 and the MightyBite #8. The Weston #12 combo addresses the same problem with a slow speed and a reverse.

The six, side by side

The Weston #12 row is the only one with a “yes” in both the slow speed and sold as a stuffer rows, which is the whole reason it leads. The LEM BigBite #8 is a substantially better grinder — see grinders for deer for that comparison — but it is a grinder that can stuff, not a stuffer.

Run limits: the spec people find out about later

Weston's manual for the #12 combo publishes a five-minute run limit and a one-year warranty. Five minutes sounds short until you notice how long a casing takes to fill: stuffing 10 lb of snack-stick mix through a narrow tube is not a five-minute job, so you will be stopping and resting the motor.

That is not a criticism of the Weston specifically — it is a criticism of stuffing with any motor small enough to sit on a kitchen counter, and Weston deserves credit for publishing the number at all. The practical consequences:

• Mix and chill in batches. If the machine needs to rest, the meat should be back in the fridge while it does, not sitting out warming up.
• Narrow tubes cost you time twice. A 10 mm snack-stick tube is slow to fill through and hard on the motor. This is the case where a piston stuffer pays for itself in one afternoon.
• Hand cranks have no run limit. Which is the quiet argument for the two Weston manuals on this page: you are the duty cycle, and you can stop whenever you like.

Tube sizes, and what each one is for

Tube diameter has to match the casing, and casing choice comes from the sausage you are making:

The STX HD 3500 6-in-1 is the only machine here that covers all three out of the box, with four funnels from 10 to 40 mm. For the others, tubes are a cheap add-on — a set of four stainless #10/#12 tubes costs less than a bag of casings. Our snack stick page covers the narrow-tube problem specifically, because it is where combos struggle most.

When a combo is the wrong answer

Three cases where buying two machines beats buying one:

• You make summer sausage or snack sticks in quantity. Narrow or very wide casings and a 5-minute motor limit do not mix. A 5 lb piston stuffer plus a plain grinder costs about the same as a good combo and does both jobs properly.
• You already own a grinder. Then the question is not which combo, it is whether to add tubes or add a stuffer — which is exactly the stuffer vs tubes question.
• Two people are working. A piston stuffer can be cranked by one person while another handles the casing. A grinder head needs the same hands in the same place.

Our sausage stuffer roundup has the piston machines, and stuffers for beginners is the page if this is your first batch.

What to buy, by batch size

How we ranked these

On the grinder rubric this site uses everywhere — season throughput (30), build (20), venison handling (15), cleanup (10), parts and warranty (15), value (10) — and then ordered within that by the three stuffing specs above, because a combo that stuffs badly is not a combo. That is why the Weston #12 sits ahead of the LEM BigBite #8 on this page and behind it on every other grinder page on this site.

We have not bench-tested any of these machines. Figures come from the makers' manuals and spec pages where they exist and the maker-supplied listing copy otherwise, and each product card links its sources. Where a maker does not publish a run limit, we say “see the manual” rather than inventing one.