Behold the glory of my 60 year old meat slicer.
(please excuse the blurriness and quality of some of the pictures. I've broken 2 phones in the last couple of months and am now using a pretty old phone my mom was kind enough to let me borrow which doesn't take the best pictures.)
This is Daisy. Daisy is a Rival brand slicer from the 50's (or so I'm guessing by what I can find online). I found Daisy on Craigslist from someone's estate sale. Daisy is beautiful. Chrome. Stainless steel. Durable. Sharp.
A while ago I was thinking about buying a meat slicer from Rural King. If you don't know what Rural King is, think about if wal-mart and tractor supply company had a baby and then sent it to school at a bass pro shop that also sold hand guns.. That's rural king. Unfortunately, the cheapest slicer there was about 80 bucks. I also read a lot of negative reviews of non-commercial meat slicers.
When I saw this baby online for $25, I figured it was worth the gamble. And it paid off.
One of the chief complaints that I read about home meat slicers was that the motors have a lot of plastic gears. Well, if weight is any indication, there isn't a piece of plastic in the motor of this thing. Pair that with the fact that it has lasted twice as long as I have and I'd say it's going to be a pretty solid product. And if the motor does happen to break, because the motor is in a separate housing attached by a shaft, I should be able to rig my drill to drive the blade. I've seen hand crank attachments online (which would come in extra handy if the zombie apocalypse people are right.)
Below are a couple shots of Daisy in action.
Homemade deli-style roast beef
Pork Jowl Bacon - known in my house as "face bacon"
I decided to give making deli style meat at home a shot because we're always looking for something easy to make when we're in a hurry. After reading a few recipes online, roast beef seemed to be the easiest, which is fine, because we like roast beef. So I bought a 5lb eye of round roast (5.99/lb) and brined it over night using this recipe (though the measuring units seem to be written in some strange foreign language). A relatively quick hour of roasting at 300 degrees and a ride on the meat slicer and bipity boppity boo - roast beef sandwich!
I was a little skeptical of the recipe at first because it used a lot of what I call "cookie spices" but it actually came out tasting fantastic.
I figure I saved almost $5/lb compared to deli priced roast beef. Multiply that by 5lbs and Daisy pretty much paid for herself on the first day. Oh, plus I'm sure this is a lot healthier than most of the stuff on the kroger shelves.
I vacuum packed these in 1lb packages in my food saver. They should keep at least a few months in the freezer (much longer than they'll last) and about a week once the're thawed in the fridge. I've got a ham curing right now which I'll probably cut into deli meat as well because we're not big on the Christmas-ham-style ham.
To sum it up, if you ever see one of these antique rival slicers at a garage sale or on craigslist, I say buy it. You won't be sorry. Plus you'll get to look down your nose at those suckers in line at the deli counter paying $11/lb for inferior meat.
