The one I’m talking about I keep seeing on late night infomercials.
They seem pretty niffty. I’m wondering: Do they really work as advertised?
Thanks in advance for any feed back.
The one I’m talking about I keep seeing on late night infomercials.
They seem pretty niffty. I’m wondering: Do they really work as advertised?
Thanks in advance for any feed back.
I have a FoodSaver, and yes it works as advertised. Now, mine is just a basic unit that makes bags. It doesn’t have the can resealer or anything.
I have the FoodSaver, too, and yes it works fine. Really great for making sure your bulk packages of meat don’t go bad (because you can split them up and then just thaw what you need.) I have some of the cannisters. Certain vegetables will stay fresh for a very long time thanks to vacuum sealing (broccoli is one that shouldn’t be vacuum sealed. Seems to go bad without fresh air.)
The only knock I had on it was the cost of the bags. They seemed pretty pricey, as if they were planning to make their profit on the bags instead of the machine. This was a while ago, I haven’t used one in 5+ years, so this could be inaccurate.
On the plus side, frozen meats stayed in very good condition, and you could always just drop the bag in water for a quick non-microwave defrost.
I’ve got the Black and Decker model, which looks pretty identical to the Foodsaver but was $30 cheaper and uses the same bags.
I use it all the time, just watch for when the bags go on sale and buy in bulk.
I have some cheap knock-off model of the FoodSaver, and I liked it pretty well but it ran out of bags and I never replaced them.
We don’t have much space in our kitchen and it was kind of more trouble than it was worth to drag it out on the counter every time we needed to put something away in the fridge; we usually just use plastic containers. If you have lots of space though and didn’t have to put it away after each use it’d probably be much handier.
Very timely thread, this is the number one item on my Christmas wishlist this year!
I throw out massive amounts of leftovers. It would be great to be able to freeze them.
We got one at Costco years ago. We always use it when we buy large amounts (at Costco!) of meat to freeze - no freezer burn. The bags can be washed & reused, so we haven’t run out yet. We have the canisters, but they don’t work well in my experience.
We’ve got one, and use it mainly when we make a bulk purchase of meat, and want to freeze it in smaller packages. It just seems to much work for taking care of tonight’s leftover mashed potatoes.
One use we were told about…
To marinade meat, place the meat and the marinade into a bag and then vacuum seal it. It seems to draw the marinade more quickly into the meat.
>>DMark pipes up from the trailer park<<
“We got us some zip lock bags and a straw.”
Put whatever you want in the ziplock bag, lock it until there is only room for the straw, stick the straw in, suck the straw hard until the air goes comes out, and then yank the straw out and quickly zip the bag closed.
Works perfect every time, no machine to clutter up the kitchen, no expensive bags to buy.
Learned this trick on one of the Food Network cooking shows.
Had a cheapo knockoff for a long while, and used its own brand of bags which were really cheap. Also worked with just about any plastic bag in existance. One of the things that really draws me to the Foodsaver is all of the jars. Heck, if there were “tupperware” (non-TM’d tupperware-like-stuff) of all the various sorts that worked with the vacuum system, I’d run out and get me one now!
I love mine.
The trick is NOT to use the canisters they sell. What you want to do is get the jar sealer so you can use it on everyday mason jars. Works like a charm!
Mine is a Sears model that works just fine. Takes a little practice, so don’t get discouraged. One thing to remember is to make sure there is no moisture on the edges you are sealing. We package up the salmon catch every year, which extends its freezer life.
I use my foodsaver a lot.
yeah the bags cost, but they are a lot less then throwing out what had been good food.
I use mine for storing meat, and portion control. When my wife buys a ton of nuts at Christmas to make cookies, I will take the rest and vac seal them into 1/2 cup or 1 cup packs. Makes it easy when we need nuts for a recipe.
SHAKES
I’ve got an inspiration of a cheap thing to try.
Instead of sucking the air out, you can push it out with outside pressure.
Fill a pot with water. Dunk the baggie into it until just the zipper is above water, and zip it shut.
That ought to work, and it’ws virtually free. And fast.
I have done this and it works, mostly. But.
I have a FoodSaver and it works great. One things that nobody mentioned yet is that the bags are reusable. You can buy bags, or rolls and make your own bags of whatever size you need. You cut open a bag, wash it out, use it again until it gets too small to use.
You can boil them and freeze them. I keep coffee in a vacuum canister (need a simple attachment to evacuate it).
The FoodSaver bags are much more hermetic than Ziploc bags. Try this: Cut an onion in half and put half in a Ziploc and suck out the air with a straw, and the other half in a FoodSaver bag. Put it in the fridge for a couple of hours. Take it out. Smell the Ziploc bag–you will very clearly smell onion right through the bag. My wife put a shredded onion in the fridge in a Ziploc bag last month and a day later the entire fridge smelled like onion. Now smell the FoodSaver bag–you will smell nothing.
I need to drag mine out again. I liked it but didn’t have much counter space, so stored it with the plan “Oh, I’ll get it out after every trip to the grocer!” Yeah, right. it’s been grossly underutilized for 18 months now.
I do like it, though. There are even some webpages and usergroups where people discuss great ways to use it. Like, say, sealing matches to take camping or on a boat. That kind of thing.
I use mine all the time. Something else I don’t think has been mentioned is that you can re-seal almost anything that you buy in a bag. Noodles, potato chips, nuts, coconut, powdered sugar, cereal, etc. I’d keep it on my counter if that’s all it did. And I use the vacuum seal a lot for types of cheese that don’t get used up before they’d get moldy. My old one had the vacuum hose attachment but I hardly ever used it.