KitchenAid KSMFGA Review: What the Attachment Will and Will Not Do

Buy the KitchenAid KSMFGA if you already own the mixer and you grind occasionally — a few pounds of burger, a batch of meatballs, trim from one deer at most. It is the genuine attachment for KitchenAid's own power hub, it comes with fine 4.5 mm and coarse 6 mm plates, it accepts KitchenAid's sausage stuffer kit, and it carries a one-year full warranty.

Skip it if you are buying a grinder because deer season is coming. KitchenAid's use-and-care guide publishes no pounds-per-minute figure and no run-time limit, there is no reverse, and the housing, grind screw, plates and blade are hand-wash only. A standalone #8 publishes a real rate and does not tie up your mixer for an afternoon.

What KitchenAid publishes

The two numbers that are missing

Every standalone grinder we cover publishes a rate: 14 lb a minute on the Weston Pro #22, and so on down the sizes. KitchenAid publishes neither a rate nor a duty cycle for the KSMFGA. That is not an oversight you can fill in from the mixer's wattage, because the limiting part is the power hub and the gearing behind it, not the motor plate.

How it behaves with venison

The two plates are the first constraint. Fine at 4.5 mm and coarse at 6 mm is a narrow spread — both sit at the fine end of what our plate sizes guide covers, so the coarse-first-pass-then-fine routine that keeps venison cool and textured is compressed into two similar holes.

The second is sinew. There is no reverse on the KSMFGA, so a wrap of silver skin around the blade means stopping, dismantling the head and clearing it by hand. That is survivable on five pounds of beef chuck and tiresome on a hindquarter. The practical answer is to trim harder than you would for a standalone: our how to grind deer meat guide covers the trim-and-chill sequence, and chilling the meat to near-frozen matters more here than on any other machine we list.

Cleaning: the part people dislike

KitchenAid's guide splits the parts. Collar, tray and pusher go on the dishwasher's top rack. The housing, grind screw, plates and blade are hand-wash. That is five minutes of washing-up for five minutes of grinding, which is the honest ratio on a small batch and the main reason attachments end up in the back of a cupboard.

The stainless alternatives

Two aftermarket attachments address exactly the KSMFGA's weak points, and both publish more than KitchenAid does — with the caveat that their throughput figures are seller claims, not maker ratings, and depend on your mixer.

Note what none of them changes: the power hub. An aftermarket head with four plates is still driven by the same mixer with the same unpublished limits, which is why we would not buy any of them as a deer-season grinder.

Who should buy it

One sentence: own the mixer, grind a few pounds at a time, want the manufacturer's own part and its warranty. That person is well served, and the KSMFGA is the right purchase.

Anyone grinding a season's venison should read best KitchenAid grinder attachments for the full attachment field, then best meat grinders for home use for what the same money buys as a standalone machine.