/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>17186020
>>17186249
i work with a commercial grade meat slicer and i've been researching the low budget ones you can buy online for relatively cheap entertaining the thought of using one at home myself.

the biggest problem with cheap meat slicers is they tend to be made with weak plastic gears to spin the blade. if the blade isn't sharpened or replaced it'll eventually break the plastic internals from stress or overwork the motor into early failure. regular maintenance is crucial on cheap meat slicers. you need to keep the gears greased inside and free of debris. replacement blades are often expensive; as in they cost up to a 1/3 the price of the entire machine. serrated blades can't be sharpened by grinding stones. they're also horrible to be gashed by accidentally. cuts like that are immediate hospital trips and you're not getting off with at least some permanent nerve damage.

so my conclusion was that these cheap ones are likely just alright for a while, but i'd probably hate maintaining one. it'd likely be best to just get a slightly more expensive meat slicer that comes with sharpening stones, a straight edge blade of a well-known manufacturer of which is reputable and easy to find replacements for, and optionally some additional safety features like a thicker blade guard or an adjustment knob lock. you can also search auction sites for restaurant closeouts and get a deal on a rather nice meat slicer if you're lucky.

there are some fancier meat slicers with automatic-slicing features but be forewarned these are a meme. the cuts come out odd and extremely inaccurate. the exact slicer i use picrel does have a powered belt that assists the manual pushing-forward and pulling-back which is really nice, but i spend hours slicing on it. the lever on the bottom raises it at a tilt for cleaning underneath it so very nice for permanent installations. you can have yourself one of these babies for the low price of $7,000 :^)