Bone grinder: can you really grind bones, and with what?

The question of a bone grinder comes from two very different worlds: raw-fed dog and cat owners, who need to grind poultry carcasses for their rations, and cooks who dream of crushing bones for broth. The honest answer can be summed up in one sentence: a domestic meat grinder can handle soft, raw poultry bones, provided it is sturdy enough, and it should never see a hard or cooked bone. This guide draws the line between what passes through, what breaks, and the machine you need.

Can you grind bones with a meat grinder?

Not all bones are equal when it comes to a meat grinder. This table ranks each type of bone with a clear verdict, from yes to never, and explains the reason in the last column.

The mechanics explain it all: in a grinder, it is the knife-screen combination that cuts, and it is designed for fibers, not minerals. A soft raw poultry bone is still flexible and cartilaginous; the screw feeds it and the blade shears it. A hard bone, on the other hand, stops it dead: this is the chipped knife scenario described in our article on the grinder that crushes meat, but worse.

Can you crush broth bones with a grinder?

This is the other use we think of, this time on the culinary side. The answer is no: marrow bones and beef bones are far too hard for a domestic machine. For broth, ask your butcher to saw them open, or roast them whole: the marrow and collagen release very well without grinding.

The grinder and BARF: grinding carcasses for your dog or cat

This is the use that popularizes the question. BARF-style raw rations incorporate meaty bones, with chicken necks and wings at the top, and grinding them allows you to feed older animals who do not chew, to control the calcium, and to mix bones, meat, and offal into a single homogeneous paste.

Three rules make the difference between a clean session and a breakdown:

• work raw and very cold: thirty minutes in the freezer firms up the necks and prevents sticky paste;
• cut into pieces the size of the feed tube, without ever forcing the pusher;
• alternate meaty bones and pieces of meat, which lubricate the passage and relieve the motor.

For a cat or small dog, pass the ground product through the screen a second time on medium: the finer texture is better suited to small jaws. Motorized screw machines are gathered in our collection of electric meat grinders.

Which grinder for soft bones: minimum power and size

After the bones: the maintenance that saves the grinder

A bone session wears more than a month of meat: check the knife edge after each grinding, and expect to sharpen it more often. Cleaning must be immediate and complete, the greasy residues from bones freezing faster than meat in the crevices of the screw:

• complete disassembly of the grinding head;
• washing with very hot soapy water;
• thorough drying of the metal parts.

One last piece of common sense: reserve one screen for your bone sessions if possible, and keep a new screen for cooking. Above all, respect the line in the table: soft and raw, never hard or cooked. The step-by-step disassembly and washing are detailed in our guide for cleaning an electric meat grinder.