Food mill

tk, what is a food mill?

A food mill is what people used to grind up food before blenders and food processors. They are exceptionally good for grains and pulses.

Hey cav, you mean those old things we used to attach to a table and grind big food into little food?

Yep.

My mom used to use one of those to make great sammwichs with leftovers. And great cornbeef hash. Now I will be thinking about this all night.

One of the things I miss most in life is my mother's cooking. She was not a great cook, just a real good cook.

food mill
No, that's a meat grinder. A food mill purees and squishes. I'll try to find a drawing.

food mill
I can't find a good picture of a food mill, but basically it's like a strainer on legs which would sit on a mixing bowl or a pot, and is, itself rather pot-shaped, though wider at the top than the bottom. It has a long handle on one side, and blades which crush the food into the bottom of the mill which is changeable; mine has three disks with different size holes for fine, coarse and medium crushing. You turn a crank on the top to move the blades around horizontally and squish the food. Can you picture it from this description?

It's not really for grain grinding, even the fine disc is too coarse for that, and I don't know whether it could grind meat. Pureeing is what I wanted it for, because I like to make cream soups in which the pureed veggies substitute for the cream as thickening.

food mill
My mother hated cooking, but when put to it she could turn out some really dandy dishes. I remember one with layers of onions and potatoes and very very thin steaks pounded and pounded really flat. And she had a barbecued pot roast to die for.

we use a food mill to make catfish bait. You get corn meal cooked down till almost dry, then you add about a pound of nightcrawlers and some really smelly chickedn. Then you mix and grind, mix and grind till it has a mealy , gluey txture so it rolls in to nice tacky pellets about as big as a marble.

can I help with anything else?

Food mill
Thanks, jespah. I couldn't find a photo that I could copy. Where did you get this from?

framerman - we used to go crabbing in the Louisiana bayous - rotten alligator meat was what they liked best.

Food mill
Sorry about the typo, farmerman. BTW - rotten alligator meat may be great for catching crabs, but it doesn't do a thing for the trunk of a car. That catfish bait doesn't exactly soulnd like Chanel No. 5, either, but whatever works . . .

Food mill
Boy, my typing is lousier than usual today!

FM and jespah know everything.

Glad I got to see the picture.

Now I am Able2know the difference between a food mill and a meat grinder!

Hmm....I was only confused become some large old food mills do attach to a table top.

My wife's aunts, from Trinidad, make a really terrific appetizer consisting of slices of Japanese eggplant coated with a spiced, hulled mung bean crust, then deep fried. The beans are soaked overnight, and then put through the food mill. It's the only thing that gets the proper texture.

can you roll it into little balls?

Don't need to, farmerman. The mixture is moist enough that it can just be patted on to both sides of the eggplant slices, then cooked.

Tk - I just went to Google images and typed Food Mill