Weston Pro Series #22 Review: The Grinder for Sinew and Six Deer

Buy the Weston Pro Series #22 if you process six or more deer a season, or a half beef, and the meat arrives with connective tissue still in it. It is rated at 1.5 HP and 14 lb a minute, runs an all-hardened-steel gear transmission, and is the only grinder we cover whose maker pitches a forward-reverse mode specifically at meats with connective tissue. Weston backs it with a five-year limited warranty.

Skip it if you take five deer or fewer. A #12 covers that season at a fraction of the size and weight, and careful trimming does more about sinew than a reverse switch does. This is a permanent-bench machine, not something that goes in a cupboard between Novembers.

What Weston publishes

Two of those lines are unusual. Most grinder listings in this class give peak watts and nothing about the gear train; Weston states hardened steel. And most say nothing at all about bone; Weston's manual draws the line explicitly.

What reverse really does

This is the feature the Pro Series is sold on, and it is worth being precise about. Weston's manual caps reverse at five seconds at a time. That tells you what it is: a way to back a wrap of silver skin off the knife so you can carry on, not a second grinding direction and not a licence to feed untrimmed trim.

14 lb a minute, in season terms

The rated figure is only useful converted into your own season. At the Ohio Division of Wildlife average of about 52 lb of venison per deer, six deer is about 313 lb. At 14 lb a minute that is roughly 22 minutes of actual feeding per pass — so a coarse pass and a fine pass is under an hour of grinding for a whole heavy season, assuming the meat is trimmed, cubed and cold before it reaches the tray.

That is the honest case for a #22: not that it grinds faster than you can work, but that it never becomes the bottleneck, and it does not heat up while it waits. Compare it against the next size down in our #12 vs #22 comparison, and against LEM's equivalent head in LEM vs Weston.

Gears, noise and heat

Weston's manual is candid about the trade: the steel gearing runs louder and warmer than other grinders. That is a straightforward consequence of metal-on-metal transmission rather than a defect, and it is the same trade every all-steel gear train makes. If your grinding happens in a kitchen with people in it, it is worth knowing before the box arrives.

Bones: read the manual, not the forum

Weston's manual allows smaller, softer bones — rabbit and poultry — and says to avoid large, dense game bones. That is more permissive than most home grinders, which exclude bone entirely, and it is still not a bone grinder. Our can you put bones in a meat grinder page works through what actually breaks and what to use instead.

Who should buy it

The Pro Series #22 suits a household at the heavy end of our season tiers: six-plus deer, or a deer season plus a bulk beef order, with a permanent place to keep a grinder that weighs what this one does. If that is you, the five-year warranty and the published gear material are the two things that justify the step up from a #12.

If it is not you, the honest answer is the smaller machine. Our best meat grinders for deer roundup sorts every head we cover by the season it can keep up with, and meat grinder sizes explained shows the size-number arithmetic behind it.

The parts to buy with it

A #22 arrives with a coarse plate and a knife. Two cheap additions make the first season easier: a fine 3/16 in. plate so you can do a second pass without changing anything else, and a 2 in. stuffing tube if you bag ground meat straight off the head rather than into lugs.

If you also make sausage, read sausage stuffer vs grinder attachment before you buy tubes for the job — stuffing through a grinder head has a real cost in smeared fat.