The ultimate sandwich tool

For as long as I've known him (nearly 36 years of marriage plus two years of dating), Don has been a sandwich guy. He could eat sandwiches for every meal, and when he was baching it, he often did.

Fast forward to about ten years ago, back in the days when we had our wonderful weekly neighborhood potlucks. At one such meal, he was mentioning to some friends that, even though we raise our own beef, he's never really been able to make roast-beef sandwiches from our own meat because he didn't have a meat slicer. Hand-slicing beef only goes so far since it's hard to cut it thin enough.

These friends had a commercial-grade meat slicer, and offered it to us on loan.

Don was very excited to try it out. He cooked a beef roast to perfection, read the instructions on how to slice the meat, and set up the machine.

Well, it was awful. It sliced well enough, but it was so powerful that it literally threw meat bits all over the kitchen. Days later, I was still cleaning stuff off the walls. We cleaned up the slicer, returned it to our friends with gracious thanks, and that was the end of that.

More recently, Don has been lobbying to get a meat slicer of our own, so last summer I started researching smaller (and less powerful) home models, and purchased two which I tucked away to be given as Christmas gifts. One model was electric (the Cogace foldable meat slicer), and the other was hand-powered (the Starfrit deli slicer) (note: these are both affiliate links).

Honestly, I wasn't going to get the hand-powered one until I saw a video of it in action, and instantly realized this would be a valuable addition to our homesteading toolbox. Besides, we always opt for hand-powered options of things whenever possible. At Christmas, I wrapped these and put them under the tree.

Needless to say, Don was thrilled with these gifts and couldn't wait to try them out. He started with a beef roast, as well as a ham steak from a pig we bought a few years ago.

Following some online directions, he scored the fat side of the beef...

...then sprinkled it with Montreal Steak Seasoning.

The ham was flavored with a variety of spices.

Using a meat thermometer, he roasted the beef to perfection. This is the beef:

And this is the ham:

Once out of the oven, he let the meat sit for about an hour (it continues "cooking" as well as cooling during this time), then put it in the fridge overnight, letting it marinate in its own juices. This not only cooled the meat, but stiffened it up so it would slice more easily.

He started out trying the hand-cranked slicer:

It was easy-peasey to use...

...and created beautiful cuts.

Then he tried out the electric slicer:

Again, beautiful cuts.

Here are the ham and roast beef slices (plus some odds and ends):

Don's review: Both machines work extremely well, but are NOT as fast as commercial slicers (which is why the borrowed one was slamming meat bits against the wall). The manual cutter cuts as fast as he can turn the handle, about one slice every couple of seconds. The electric slicer is slightly faster, about one slice per second. Both produce identical-quality results (namely, excellent).

The meat doesn't have to be pressed hard against the blade; just light pressure is fine. One thing is the blades are only about six inches high, so with bigger meats (say, a huge ham), the meat would have to be cut in half so the blade can get through.

Encouraged by this success, he started with a larger roast beef weighing six pounds.

He prepped and roasted it in a similar way. Ready to go into the oven...

...and baked. (An accurate meat thermometer is vital at this step.)

Slicing using both machines:

He bagged up the slices in three-ounce bags, which gives two sandwiches per bag. These he froze.

Curious how this output compared to what was being sold in the store, I photographed packages of sliced roast beef: $15/lb.

Of course, most cuts were packaged in quantities well under a pound.

This means, conceivably, the six-pound roast he started with yielded about $90 worth of sliced roast beef.

So yes, these meat slicers were a valuable addition to our homestead repertoire of tools.