Annie....save me....or have fun at my expense, either one...

I've been thinking about buying a sealer and would appreciate comments on this thread. Is there a brand you all recommend or does it matter? Does a freezer baggy work just as well?

The best you can find is the Food Saver by Tilia. I found it does a great job at pulling air out of the heavy gauge plastic bags, and will heat seal them in a few seconds. Today, I will be making another big batch of english muffins with sausage and egg. These get put into 6 inch plastic bas you make on the machine, and each will have its air removed before its heat sealed. I have tried using regular freezer bags with this unit, and they do seal OK too, but because regular freezer bags are quite thin compared to the FS plastic bags, the regular ones don't give as much protection againts freezer burn or loss of moisture when stored in a freezer longer than about 6 months. The FS bags are sold in long rolls, and various widths. You can make any length sized bag for most anything up to 11 inches wide by 10 feet long or more. Some of these vacuum sealers also have a small vac port on them that attaches to a hose and canister, or a small sealer that can pull a vacuum on a regular or wide mouth canning jar. I use their adaptor all the time, as it works great when I want to have some dried dill weed herb, as it pulls out all the air and makes the seal all in one operation. I bought my unit from Costco or BJ's, and its been a real help for keeping a lot of frozen stuff from drying out.

PS: Just got a note about their web site being closed down for a couple of days, from Sept. 28 to Oct. 1, while they make changes in their site.

Here is a link that might be useful: Food Saver site

There is a company on Ebay that sells the foodsavers. I bought the vac825 for $30.00. The only thing you get is the sealer no manual or anything else. But for 30.00 you can't beat it.
EJ

Sorry, Jessica, I don't have a vacumn sealer, I've never used one, I don't know anyone who has one.

As you know, I have little recent experience with how long it takes or hitting the hole just right. You, as Master of the Tools, should be able to provide more insight.

And there you go...

Annie

Where did you buy the Reynolds vacuum sealer? What store/ What is it called?

You mentioned it as if you have one. I saw a Gourmet news letter that said it was great but I can not find any details.

I have one of the FoodSaver sealers. I havn't had it for a terribly long time (less than 2 months) but I LOVE it. I also love the fact that you can wash and re-use the bags most of the time.

You can get cannisters for stuff that you use alot...otherwise you waste alot of bag opening and closing all the time. I wasn't so keen on the cannisters since you have to be careful using them for powdered items (like flour, sugar, ground coffee, etc), which for me seems like a waste of time. However, my hubby likes to grind his own coffee, so I found they work GREAT for whole coffee beans!

Anyway...just my opinion :)

Laura

Seal a Meal and Food Saver are now the same company, as well as Ball, Oster, Sunbeam, and many others. Jardin is the main company

My lady friend is demoing them at Wal-Mart (Brewer, Maine) this weekend, Reynolds Vacuum sealer. The have quart and gallon size bags.I'm sure this is where they make their profits. If this items takes off, it won't be long before the Chinese start making knock off copies.

I worked with it last night and it works fine for me if used on a flat table but not in your hand. I have the large seal a meal too and LOVE it. You HAVE to use their special bags or the Black & Decker special bags. The Reynolds product has a special bag that you MUST use to make it work but you can reuse this bag up to 10 times says the maker. It would be an idea gadget to bring with you in the field, pick wild fruits and seal them on the spot to keep the juices from escaping. Great for hunting and fishing, dress your game, seal and pack. Don't have to worry about bugs, bloody clothes, or mess.

I use the seal a meal for sealing padded mailing bags for my eBay sales items. Take a size 5 padded poly mailer, cut it in half and seal the edge with the sealer, now you have 2 mailers.

I use a regular impulse heat sealer and it takes about 1-2 seconds to seal a plastic bag of most any kind. I have used one of these to make white plastic fabric bags to protect my fruits on the trees too. Some of the bags are long, like 3 foot and slide down over a whole limb of fruits. The Food Saver takes much longer to heat seal, and I found that it can easily overheat after making some bags from cut, open ended, rolls. I will use the impulse sealer to make the bottoms of bags, and can crank out about 20 a minute. The impulse sealer can handle all thicknesses of plastic materal. They cost about $75 though, but last a very long time.

I've had the professional Food Saver II for several years and have processed 200lbs. of bird food every 3 months as well as repackaging some store-bought foods that go into the freezer with it.

I freeze quartered or chopped peppers of all sorts on cookie sheets and when they are well frozen, I bag them into a zip-type bag (leaving un-zipped). Then one or several of these bags, depending on type of pepper and size of cut, into a FoodSaver bag. The air is removed to the degree I wish. I have control of when the machine seals. I can let it remove all the air and automatically shut off, or manually override it to seal sooner. Peppers are more compact and are easier to store in the freezer. I love this machine.

When we bought our upright freezer, the salesman said that the action of the self-defrosting feature can dry out things out a bit, but the extra layer of packaging and the airless feature of the FoodSaver that I use would allow for a longer freezer-shelf life. It works beautifully. Year old meat has no freezer burn and tastes as good as that which was frozen a week ago. We buy larger amounts of cheese and other things when on sale, cut and pack it in the size of packages convenient for our use, seal them in FS bags, and they always seem to be good as fresh until we get to them.

Some other manufacturers bags will work with the Tilia FoodSaver but the ones I've tried (trying to save $$) were of lesser quality and I couldn't re-use as long, didn't stay sealed or were noticeably thinner.

Crystal

the FS bags have a 5 layer plastic and one of the layers is nylon, which is quite strong. No one I know can tear through a FS bag compared to any regular bags. Just did a search, and found a maker of a generic sealing bag useful for FS machines. My machine isn't the professional one, but works well enough for my needs. They do keep meat well and I have stuff 2 years old in the freezer that is still very good. Amazon.com also has several companies offering cheap prices on authentic FS bags and rolls.

I own one of these, and I actually like it. But recently I picked up a VacnSeal though, and it is 100 times stronger. It works with my central vacuum. It basically seals a bag in 2 seconds. I use the reynolds bags with it.

I'll put the link so I don't have to rant anymore! haha.

Here is a link that might be useful: VacnSeal

Ziplock is now adverising a $5 or less vacuum pump for a new vac bag they sell. Its just a manual piston that you pull on to suck out air. Only issue is it still uses thin plastic bags that have a tendency to allow moisture to pass through, no matter how tight they seal. The FS plastic is very thick and is several layers, of plastics. The 'quilted' design gives them more ability to pull out air from all around the product to be bagged. I have yet to see any freezer burn on any of the packages have bagged with FS. Some are in my freezer well over a year or more.

I bought one of the renolds sealers it seems to work well for the price $9 it is no foodsaver vac but it is better than just a freezer bag probly not great for production work though I did find it really easy to use

I think the Zip Lock pump would be similar, at just about $5.

Foodsaver...I use mine nearly every day for something. I can make a head of lettuce last three weeks with no slimey stuff. Celery last 2-4 weeks. I have the attachment for cannisters so I do my coffee beans. I am a gourmet coffe maniac so keeping the beans fresh until use is a biggy with me. I also use the wide mouth canning jar attachment to marinate chicken breasts or other meat in Ball 1/2 gallon jars. Just put the marinade and breasts in there and it sucks the marinade right into the meat. I have had 4 of these in about 18 years and no complaints other than the gaskets wear out faster than I would like but I really use mine a lot for all my sun-dried tomatoes. You can buy generic bags at Walmart or on Ebay. They are of course, really handy for bagging up either fresh or dehydrated vegies.

I also use my FoodSaver daily and couldn't get along without it. I also got a "Pump-n-Seal" on-line which can make any glass jar with metal lid into a vacauum sealed container. (I don't remember how much I paid for it, but it was very inexpensive.) I use old canning jars with used lids and can vacuum seal my coffee beans, dried goods, leftovers and any food that you would freeze in jars. It does not, however, replace the need for processing in BWB or PC for canning foods.
It's simple to use and cheap since you can use any kind of jar. You just poke a hole in the cap and a little plastic tab covers the hole and seals it after vacuuming. There was even a web-site that gave instructions for how to make the little tabs if you didn't want to purchase them. But I haven't needed to replenish my original seals since they can be used many times. I highly recommend this gadget in addition to the FoodSaver.

I have one of the Reynolds vacuum sealers. Once we figured out how to best position it, we've had no problems. One of our TV stations gave someone one and had her freeze a bunch of stuff, then a few weeks later a reporter went to check on the results. The lady was just thrilled with it, which prompted us to go get one since we had a large amount of green beans to freeze. I've checked on them every so often and they don't have any ice chrystals in them, so I think it works fine. Just my 2cents!