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The Food Saver/Vacuum Sealer Topic, 2011 to Present


drago

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If you store spices in an evacuated jar, the volatile flavors will end up in the “headspace”. Better to store in a vac sealed bag. 

 

Its like what would happen to soda if you put it in a vacuum jar. All the carbonation will turn into gas and go out of the liquid.  

Edited by gfweb (log)
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  • 1 year later...

I have a crappy Hamilton Beach vacuum sealer.  It was free to me thru a rewards program at work.  It’s sporadically functional.  What should I get to replace it?  Wish I felt I could spend the money on a chamber vac, but right now, no.

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1 hour ago, Jacksoup said:

I have a crappy Hamilton Beach vacuum sealer.  It was free to me thru a rewards program at work.  It’s sporadically functional.  What should I get to replace it?  Wish I felt I could spend the money on a chamber vac, but right now, no.

 

You're not getting a stimulus check??  Mine came this morning.  A chamber vacuum sealer is a wondrous thing.  Perhaps not up there with a rotor-stator homogenizer, a blast freezer, or an Anova Precision Oven, but still.

 

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Cooking is cool.  And kitchen gear is even cooler.  -- Chad Ward

Whatever you crave, there's a dumpling for you. -- Hsiao-Ching Chou

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@Jacksoup A friend let me borrow her Food Saver. I tested it out on cheese only (Kerrygold Dubliner, which is sort of a hybrid of cheddar & Parmesan). (The cheese exuded some liquid within the bag, though, which is supposedly a common thing.)

 

Anyway, the point is that the suction was good, the seal was solid / secure, & the Food Saver was easy to use. IMO, the price is reasonable, too.

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My parents' FoodSaver came to me when my father died a few years ago. I don't use it a lot, but I *do* use it pretty consistently. For soups and such, I'll often freeze them in a container and then vac-seal them once they're frozen (to save space, extend storage life, and get my containers back into circulation). I also take meats, fish, poultry etc out of their styrofoam trays and vac-seal them for the freezer.

Chamber sealers do things a FoodSaver can't, I guess, but it's certainly all I need at present. If this one crapped out, I'd probably buy another.

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“Who loves a garden, loves a greenhouse too.” - William Cowper, The Task, Book Three

 

"Not knowing the scope of your own ignorance is part of the human condition...The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club.” - psychologist David Dunning

 

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I've owned 2 foodSavers. I didn't use them that much because: 1) they weighed a lot for what they were, and 2) they were way too fiddly for my tastes. I bought this vacuum sealer some months ago and have been very happy with it. Much lighter and not fiddly. For me fiddly was having to carefully get the nozzle into the bag and not have it shift while closing the machine. This doesn't have a nozzle, just the channel you put the bag top into.

 

3 hours ago, chromedome said:

For soups and such, I'll often freeze them in a container and then vac-seal them once they're frozen (to save space, extend storage life, and get my containers back into circulation).

That's a great tip. Thank you.

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Porthos Potwatcher
The Once and Future Cook

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Your experience doesn't sound at all like my FoodSaver (which itself is at least 4-5 years old now).

I just slide the open end of the bag into the front of the machine, and it does the rest. Probably pretty much like the one you're using. I have the option of doing things manually for tricky items like baked goods, where a full vacuum would just smoosh them. Also there's some sort of nozzle for getting a vacuum in a rigid container, though I've never used that.

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“Who loves a garden, loves a greenhouse too.” - William Cowper, The Task, Book Three

 

"Not knowing the scope of your own ignorance is part of the human condition...The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club.” - psychologist David Dunning

 

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Sorry if I'm late to the thread.  I've had a 5800 series FoodSaver for the past 3 1/2 years.   It's one of maybe 5 cooking related items I own that if it got lost/stolen/broken I would just buy another without looking at the other options. Only complaint that I have is that it's larger than most of the other models, about the size of a large toaster oven, so it doesn't sit on the counter and goes back to the basement between uses. 

 

I use it for soups, big packages of meat from the store and venison.  Works great for all those things.   I just had a package of pork shoulder chunks from 2018 that gotten lost in the bottom of the freezer.   They were great.   I put them in a sunday sauce and I never would have known they were a couple of years old.    

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