Chewin'

the News

January 2002

Vacuum Sealer Reviews

by 30 Day Gourmets

IT’S A MUST HAVE
I've done 30 Day Gourmet a couple times a year for almost 3 years. I just have to tell you the same as I tell all my friends and the ladies at MOPS. Your cookbooks are the only freezer cooking books that I use. I love the charts and cheat sheets and use them even when doing a "regular" shopping trip.

As for your request for info on the vac sealer. They are a MUST HAVE! Just don't buy it on late night infomercials. WalMart, Kohls, and Target all sell them as well - and cheaper I might add. My FoodSaver Vac 550 is the only appliance that I have out on my kitchen counter. My kids are fanatics about using it. Every bag of chips, cereal, cheese, you name it gets sealed. I've even saved old memorabilia this way. Saved chips paid for it alone! Rescued cheese pays for the bags. The bags are a bit pricey, but work better than zip lock and can be custom sized for the meal at hand.

The only down side is that you can't just seal liquids. You must freeze them first. So for Saucy Porkchops I fill and leave open the bag and set it in a glass container in the freezer. When I'm ready to put the next meal in the freezer, I pull out the open bag and seal it then. It's an extra step but very easy. Much easier than squishing air out of a zip bag or using a straw (Yuck!).

Suzanne from MI
 

FREEZING “LIQUIDY” FOODS
I love my food saver. I have everything organized in the freezer. The one drawback is that you have to quick freeze anything that is liquidy. That’s ok with me. It frees up my containers to use for leftovers and such. It is an expensive investment but well worth it. You can buy bulk meat/;poultry and freeze them and they keep longer than in the freezer bags. I buy bunches of boneless skinless breasts and marinate them and then freeze them in the marinade. Much less expensive than buying the pre-marinated ones. Hamburger and roasts keep sooo much longer. I really can’t say enough about that machine.

Maureen from AZ

NEVER GOIN’ BACK
I love my Vacuum Sealer! My foods taste and look as if they were freshly made. One of the benefits is that you can store more in the freezer! Never will I go back to the old method of freezing.

LaDonna from SC
 

MORE ON LIQUIDS
My tip for using the vacuum sealer is this. Line the container with plastic wrap. Freeze the food to be vacuum sealed. Put in the freezer for about a day to harden. I then remove the plastic wrap and put it in the vacuum bag, vacuum seal it.

This is especially important if there is a lot of liquid such as a marinade. If you try to vacuum seal a marinade it always gets sucked out and you just can't get a seal.

It is also good for freezing things that you want to have a particular shape. I have even frozen soup (weight watchers) in a bowl shape. Then when I pull it out of the bag I put it right into the bowl and it fits perfectly. Looks a little odd in the freezer for a while but pays off in the long rug.

I have also found that I can reuse the bags with the minimal cleaning if it is frozen then sealed.  hope that this helps with your January issue.

Louise from CA
 

FREEZE IN PANS AND POP ‘EM OUT THEN SEAL
I own a FoodSaver and absolutely love it! We (my husband and I) make our recipes, freeze them in the pans, then pop them out like popscicles and seal them with the FoodSaver. This way, we can take it out of the freezer, unseal it, pop it into the correct size pan, and thaw and cook. You can freeze things right in the freezer bag too. This is helpful if you have limited freezer space. Everything freezes VERY flat.

Debby
 

BUSY CAREER WOMAN – FREEZING FOR TWO
I am a busy career woman with a highly stressful job and a husband who has been unable to work for the last year due to health problems. One day on his way to the VA Hospital he heard a program on WCRF about once a month cooking and was telling me about it when I came home from work. I just recently started cooking the 30 Day Gourmet way, and I LOVE it. I enjoy cooking anyway as it is a release from the stress of the day. I enjoy trying ALL new recipes, and so far have only found one that we didn't care for. I have had a Food Saver for 2 years, but it has really been getting a work out lately with this new method of cooking. I freeze things in rectangular pyrex dishes with plastic snap on lids, each makes about 2 servings for us which is great since we are concentrating on portion control also. Once frozen I pop them out of their containers and vacuum seal, (they fit pefect in the qt. size bags ) label and return to the freezer. I recently took a pkg. of ground chuck out of the freezer that had gotten buried in the back as things often due, it was 2 years old, and had been vacuum sealed when I first got my sealer. When I opened it, it was as fresh as the day I had brought it home. So in my opinion HATS OFF to Food Saver and Once a Month Cooking.

Some of my friends think I am crazy doing all this cooking, but it is funny how they are always asking what I cooked over the weekend, checking out the food I bring for lunch, and saying it smells and looks good. My husband jokingly asks if when I fill this freezer, are we going to buy another one. Keep up the good work.

Donna, A new convert from OH
 

FRESH MEAT FROM THE BUTCHER?
I purchased a Tilia 500 this summer. I've been 30 day cooking (actually 90 day) for over 4 years. I have 5 children and a husband who are always hungry. We buy our meat every 3 months from a butcher. I gather up 11 other families’ meat orders and we call the butcher and place a rather substantial order. This entitles us to several bonuses! Great prices (how about $3.29 lb for Porterhouses), and very fresh meat. He butchers the beef there, and the chicken comes to him fresh...not "frozen fresh". He cuts and wraps however we want (yes, he is good) but my husband is picky when it comes to beef. He does not like it from frozen very well, especially a good steak. This is why I purchased the sealer. (I purchased it from Sam's Club...same deal as on TV, but bags are MUCH cheaper there) I packaged my beef, fresh from the butcher, the first week of Oct, 2001. We just ate our last package of t-bones, and when I opened the bag, they looked, smelled, and tasted like they did the day I bought them! yummy.

I tried to seal some bags of marinated fajita strips, and the sealer does try to suck-up the marinade. Tilia says to freeze "liquid foods" first....to me, that's one step too many. I did freeze my marinades in zipper freezer bags like always, and they are great, too. I did find that for fresh meat, that is going to be eaten fresh, not cooked into something else, are far superior to zipper bag freezing. You can never "suck" all that air out by mouth. I did use it to seal and reseal some foil type bags...chips, etc....it was fair for that, but doesn't suck out the air. My machine came with a jar sealer. You put it on a lid of a standard jar and it air seals it again. This is pretty cool. You can store things like grains and nuts in glass jars for freshness, without using a lot of bags. That to me was the biggest downfall....the bags are more costly than zipper bags, but for fresh tasting and looking foods, it pays for itself! Also, with the money I save on buying meats in bulk, it definitely pays for itself! Hope this is helpful

Jaymie
 

GREAT FOR CHEESE, CHICKEN, MEATLOAF
Hi To Everyone at 30 Day Gourmet,
And Happy New Year ! All of my family is asleep so I thought that I would start my new year off by getting re-started bulk cooking. I wanted to send a response to the vacuum sealers. I have had one for about 2-3 years and I love it! I use it for everything from bulk cheese, whole chickens, meatloaf mixture, to parsley parmesan chicken. The only thing that I don't vacuum seal is anything with a lot of liquid ie. spaghetti sauce. I do however, vacuum bbq marinated pork chops/chicken and I allow my marinated chicken to freeze before I vacuum it. It has saved me a lot of money and time. I buy my bags at Sam's Club and you can also buy the sealer there too. I have a Foodsaver by Tilia. Hope this helps anyone who is interested.

Julie

BOIL THE BAGS, SEAL MASON GIFT JARS
Just going through my "e-mail" listing and realized that I hadn't replied to the request to the food saver. I have one of the original and love it. We bought ours YEARS ago, and I am still using it. I will make things ahead and freeze. I love the fact that you can boil the bags. I will make something, cook it, then freeze it and on one of the days that I don't have to cook I pull the food saver bag out of the freezer and boil it. The meal is not tough nor is it dry. I also use the adapter for mason jars so that when I do gifts in a jar, I will do the food saver and it is like the jar has been heat sealed, the lid is tightly on, there is a dimple in it. So I hope that helps you. I know that I don't use it to the fullest capacity, but I am using it more every week. It truly has made a difference in time for me, it has helped to make extra and freeze it for later use, and the leftovers work great in this area as well.

Thank you,

Carolyn
 

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