LEM Products BigBite #8 Meat Grinder — 0.5 HP Electric, Stainless Steel

LEM BigBite Meat Grinder Review: Why the #8 Costs Four Times What a Kitchen Grinder Does

There are two entirely different products sold under the words “meat grinder”. One is a plastic-geared kitchen appliance that will mince a pound of beef for burgers and then need a rest. The other is a piece of processing equipment built for people who buy half a cow, shoot their own venison, or make sausage in twenty-pound batches. The LEM BigBite #8 is emphatically the second kind.

That distinction explains a price that looks absurd next to the eighty-dollar grinders it shares a shelf with. LEM sells to hunters and home butchers, and its reputation rests on machines that keep working through a whole deer rather than through a single evening. Whether that is worth four hundred dollars depends entirely on which of those two products you actually need.

Quick verdict: the LEM BigBite meat grinder scores 8.8/10 in this SoftPickr review. It is the best-rated grinder on its shelf for a reason, and the reason is metal where cheaper machines use plastic, but it only makes sense at volumes most kitchens never reach.

Key Specifications

Metal Gears Are the Entire Argument

Almost every grinder under two hundred dollars uses a nylon or composite gear somewhere in the drive train, and it is there on purpose. It acts as a sacrificial part: hit a bone fragment or jam the auger and the plastic gear strips instead of the motor burning out. That is a sensible design for occasional use, and it is also why those machines have a queue of owners hunting for replacement gears after their first serious batch.

The BigBite runs all-metal gearing driven by a half-horsepower motor. Nothing in the train is designed to give way, which means jams have to be cleared rather than absorbed, and it means the machine does not develop the gradual slack that turns a cheap grinder into a noisy one. Over a decade of annual game processing, that difference is the whole product.

Seven Pounds a Minute Changes How You Cook

Throughput sounds like a specification for professionals until you have ground twenty pounds of pork shoulder through a kitchen appliance. At roughly seven pounds a minute, a whole batch of sausage mix passes through the BigBite in the time it takes to clear the bench. At a pound a minute on a lightweight machine, the same job is an afternoon and the motor spends most of it hot.

The practical effect is that you start doing things you would otherwise not bother with. Grinding your own burger blend from chuck and brisket becomes a ten-minute job rather than a project. Coarse-then-fine double grinding, which is what actually gives good sausage its texture, stops being something you skip. Speed here buys willingness, not just time.

Stainless Steel and the Cleaning Reality

The housing and auger are stainless steel, which matters for two reasons that have nothing to do with looks. Stainless does not hold the smell of last month’s venison the way aluminium does, and it tolerates the acidic marinades and cures that sausage-making involves. It also survives being scrubbed hard, repeatedly, which is what grinder parts require.

The trade is weight and thermal mass. At 32.6 lb this is not a machine you lift into a cupboard between uses, and the metal parts come out of a hot wash needing to be dried immediately or they will spot. LEM builds the head to strip down without tools, which is the detail that keeps cleaning to about ten minutes rather than half an hour.

The #8 Head and Choosing the Right Size

Grinder sizing follows an old butchery convention where the number describes the head, not the motor. A #8 takes plates around 2.5 inches across; a #12 takes larger plates and passes more meat; a #22 is small-commercial equipment. Bigger is not automatically better, because a larger head with the same motor grinds slower under load, and larger plates cost more to replace.

For a household processing a deer a year, or making sausage in batches up to about fifty pounds, the #8 is the right size and the cheapest entry into LEM’s properly built range. If you are processing multiple animals a season or running a hunting camp, the #12 BigBite is the honest recommendation instead, and the price gap is smaller than the capability gap.

Limitations and Compromises

The price is the obvious limitation and it is not a small one. Four hundred and twenty dollars buys a very good stand mixer, a chest freezer, or five of the AAOBOSI grinders sitting next to it on the same search results page. If you grind meat twice a year for burgers, this machine is straightforwardly the wrong purchase, and no amount of build quality changes that arithmetic.

The Amazon listing is unhelpfully thin about the one thing you would want confirmed at this price. Its warranty field reads, in full, “Warranty” — no term, no coverage, no exclusions. It also files “Capacity: 7 pounds”, which is the throughput per minute rather than any capacity, and its Item Highlight describes the machine as a “Heavy-Duty Food Processor”, which it is not. Check LEM’s own documentation for the warranty term before buying.

It is heavy, it is loud, and it takes up real bench space. Thirty-two pounds means it lives where you put it, which for most kitchens means a garage shelf or a basement bench rather than a countertop. Anyone with limited storage, limited bench height, or a back that objects to lifting thirty pounds awkwardly should factor that in before the specification sheet seduces them.

Cleaning, Chilling and Blade Care

Chill everything before you grind. Put the auger, plate and knife in the freezer for half an hour and keep the meat just short of frozen at the edges. Warm fat smears rather than cuts, which is what produces the pasty texture people blame on the grinder. Cold parts and cold meat are the difference between clean-cut grind and mush, and they also make cleaning far easier afterwards.

Strip the head down immediately after use, wash by hand in hot soapy water, and dry the metal parts at once rather than leaving them to air. Stainless will spot and the carbon-steel plates and knives that ship with many grinders will rust within hours. Wipe the plate and knife with a food-safe mineral oil before storing. Never put the plates or knife through a dishwasher — the detergent pits them and the heat dulls the cutting faces.

Who Should Buy It?

• You process game or buy meat in bulk and grind twenty pounds at a time.
• You make sausage and want a coarse grind followed by a fine one.
• You have already stripped the gears in a cheaper grinder.
• You want all-metal gearing rather than a sacrificial plastic part.
• You have somewhere to keep a 32.6 lb machine permanently.

Look elsewhere if you grind a few pounds a month for burgers, where an AAOBOSI or STX machine at a fifth of the price does the same job well enough and stores in a cupboard. Look elsewhere too if bench space or lifting is a constraint, and if you process more than one animal a season, skip straight to the #12 BigBite rather than buying the #8 and outgrowing it within two years.

SoftPickr Verdict

The LEM BigBite meat grinder earns 8.8/10. This is a piece of equipment rather than an appliance, and it is priced accordingly. The metal gearing, half-horsepower motor and stainless construction are not marketing points but the specific reasons the machine is still working after the tenth deer, and the 4.7-star average across more than three thousand ratings reflects owners who use it exactly that hard.

The one compromise is that it is comprehensively over-specified for ordinary kitchen use, and its own listing does not tell you the warranty term. Buy it if you grind in bulk and have been let down by something cheaper. If you have not yet worn out a cheap grinder, buy a cheap grinder first.

Price and availability change frequently on Amazon, and prices shown here may be out of date — check the current listing before ordering.

LEM BigBite meat grinder — Frequently Asked Questions

Is the LEM BigBite #8 worth four times the price of a kitchen grinder?

Only at volume. The all-metal gearing, half-horsepower motor and stainless construction pay for themselves if you process game annually or make sausage in twenty-pound batches, because cheaper machines use a sacrificial plastic gear that strips under exactly that load. If you grind a couple of pounds a month, an eighty-dollar grinder is the rational choice.

What does the “#8” actually mean?

It refers to the size of the grinder head and the plates it takes, following an old butchery convention, not the motor power. A #8 uses plates roughly 2.5 inches across. A #12 takes larger plates and more meat per pass. For a household doing one deer a year or batches up to about fifty pounds, #8 is the right size.

Can it grind bone for pet food?

No. This is a meat grinder with a half-horsepower motor and metal gears that will not give way, which means a bone jam damages the machine rather than a sacrificial part. Grinding bone requires purpose-built equipment with different plates and much more power. Trim bone out before grinding, as you would with any home grinder.

What warranty does it come with?

The Amazon listing is no help here: its warranty field contains only the word “Warranty” with no term or coverage stated. LEM publishes warranty terms for the BigBite range on its own documentation, and you should check the current term there before ordering. At this price, an unspecified warranty field is a fair reason to verify before committing.

Ready to buy? You can check the current price of the LEM BigBite meat grinder on Amazon — the listing shows live pricing and current stock, both of which move around more than the specification does. SoftPickr earns a commission on qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.

Related Reviews

If the LEM BigBite meat grinder is not quite the right fit, these SoftPickr reviews cover the closest alternatives we have tested:

• Hamilton Beach Stack and Snap Food Processor Review
• T-fal Ultimate Hard Anodized Cookware Set Review
• McCook MC19 15-Piece Knife Set Review