Vacuum sealers

[Rich G]

I’ve been borrowing friend’s Foodsaver to package my jerky and bulk ingredients for my homemade meals, but I think I’m going to buy one for myself.  I really only need a basic one, and I’d like to go as cheap as possible.  I have a handheld unit that uses special bags (Freshsaver) but I’m not wild about the results and costs for the bags.   Are the cheap Foodsaver units any good?  Has anyone tried a Gormia unit? Thanks for any help.

[Bill Giles]

You might try to pick up a used one on eBay. I’ve got a couple of Ziploc V203 vacuum sealers. They retail for about $50. It makes a much wider seal than my Foodsaver and I think that the wide seal is more reliable. It works with Foodsaver bags and all of the generic bags that I’ve bought on eBay. The reason that I have two is that the vacuum pump piston pin falls out of the one that I bought at retail. I can take it apart and put the pin back in, but that is tedious and time consuming. I have yet to have a problem with the one that I bought on eBay. Be careful of two things when vacuum packing: Sharp pieces in the food bag can puncture the bag and don’t let liquid get sucked into the vacuum pump. If you are sealing wet food, you can roll up a paper towel and put it in the bag just below the seal to help prevent liquids getting in the vacuum chamber. If you vacuum pack a waffle, the vacuum will flatten it into a pancake. The Ziploc V203 also allows you to seal bags without running the vacuum pump, handy when making bags out of tubing.

[JCH]

I bought the bottom of the line (I think) Seal-a-Meal and these zip-lock bags.  Both work beautifully and I recommend the combo highly.

[Damon A]

I’d say go cheap. If you’re not sealing much or anything with liquid most all units will do the job. The biggest decision for me when buying most anything especially something electric or mechanical is the companies warranty.

The cheap vacuums can be just as much of a work horse as the more expensive units. I have a Black and Decker VS200. Which has made it through I believe 12+ years of hunting and camping seasons.

[Dale Wambaugh]

They are fairly common in thrift stores for cheap. I got mine at a yard sale with a CASE of bags. The bags aren’t cheap and rare at thrift stores. I’ll keep an eye out.

[Nick Smolinske]

I would definitely get a FoodSaver brand, because they have an attachment port for a mason jar attachment. That’s a much better way to store bulk ingredients for meals than bags. Cheaper over the long run because you can re-use the jars and lids indefinitely.

I have a whole set of shelves in my dining room full of vac-sealed mason jars of dried ingredients, snacks, etc. Very handy not to have to go to the store before a trip for odd ingredients, and I can buy dried veggies and the like online for cheap.

There may be other brands that are compatible with the FoodSaver mason jar attachment, but I’m not aware of them. What I would really like to get is a quieter vacuum sealer, but that’s not as easy thing to find.

[Bill Giles]

The Ziploc V203 also has the auxiliary vacuum port and comes with the tubing for it. I agree on the Foodsaver Mason jar attachment. If you dehydrate your own food, you can store it under vacuum in a mason jar until you are ready to repack it. I have a small vacuum pump that I use for Mason jars instead of the sealer. I have both Foodsaver and Ziploc vacuum sealers. I have had vacuum pump problems with both brands and seal leakage problems with Foodsaver. If I use the Foodsaver, I always double seal the bags to prevent seal leakage. What ever brand you use, you should make certain that the bag is flat under the sealing bar. If it’s not, the seal may not hold. When the bag is empty, it will naturally lay flat. Once there is food in the bag, it may not lay flat.

[Nick Smolinske]

Bill,

What’s the small sealer that you use for mason jars? And is it any quieter?

The noise of the foodsaver when sealing mason jars really bugs my girlfriend (and I find it a little obnoxious as well…). It’s becoming a conflict in our relationship…

As for foodsavers and sealing issues, I have had good luck so far with a GameSaver model. From the Amazon reviews it seems like they are a little heavier duty, and I haven’t had a seal failure yet. I use it to make single-serve sauce packets sometimes and it works fine even if the bags end up a bit oily on the inside, it seems to get hot enough to cook off whatever’s in there and still make a good seal.

[Bill Giles]

The vacuum pump that I use is just as noisy as the ones in the vacuum sealers. It’s actually an air sampling pump and not a whole lot more convenient than using the one on the vacuum sealer. My Foodsaver vacuum sealers are faily old and they may have improved the sealing heater in the current models. I don’t know that there is any way to know how good the sealer is until you get one and try it. Making sure that there are no creases or grease or water in the seal area helps. I have seen some bags lose the vacuum within a day of sealing them. I try not to vacuum seal bags with liquid in them, but there is often some liquid that will pull up into the seal area. If it does, I often make a second seal just up from the first one. This doesn’t take much time since the vacuum is already established. One of these days, if I ever save the money, I’d like to get a vacuum chamber sealer which can handle bags full of liquid.

[Todd T]

What’s the small sealer that you use for mason jars? And is it any quieter?

I doubt you’d want mason jars if carrying things for hiking, but I bought a Pump-n-Seal hand pump years ago and it works surprisingly well.  Don’t bother with those crazy metal bowl lids, but with mason jars it’s hard to beat.  Quiet, easy, fast, and the vacuum holds indefinitely as long as you keep the little “band-aid” clean.

[Nick Smolinske]

Well, I don’t use the mason jars for carrying things for hiking, but for storage at home. A great example is dried mangoes. I can get great ones at my local natural foods store but they are almost always sold out in the summer. With a vacuum sealer I can stock them up in the winter and have easy access all year. Not having to go to that particular store when I pack for a trip is a bonus as well.

The pump-n-seal looks like a really nice option actually. I just ordered one even… I would be willing to bet that you could use it in conjunction with the Foodsaver mason jar attachment (the wide-mouth attachment at least). Then you wouldn’t need to use the tabs or punch holes in your lids at all.

I will test it with the Foodsaver attachment when I get it.

 

[Dale Wambaugh]

Costco has great dried mangos. Like candy :)

[Bill Giles]

I use the Foodsaver Mason jar adapters to vacuum seal dry foods in Mason jars for long term storage. Most of the time it is for foods that I have dehydrated. They fit over the regular Mason jar lids, so I don’t need any special lids for the jars. I also freeze much of the food that I dehydrate. Freezing dried food may sound like overkill, but it slows down the oxidation process and helps prevent rancidity in fats.

[David Thomas]

Trader Joe’s also has dried mangos, both sweetened and unsweetened.  I’ve never found a case where buying fresh fruit and drying it myself was cheaper than letting professionals do on a large scale much closer to the orchard.  But I totally see DIY if you have your own tree.

FoodSaver is seen as the Chevrolet of vacuum packers up here (in Alaska where a lot more salmon, berries and moose meat is vac-packed than in most areas).  Everyone has one now or in their past.  People who get serious about it are spending $1000+ (versus $189) for machines that pull a much higher vacuum and that keep the whole bag in a vacuum chamber instead of only pulling air through the bag’s open end.

Like boats and pick-up trucks, I aspire to NOT have that equipment myself but rather be good friends with someone who does.  For one-off tasks, I use a FoodSaver machine at my house.  If I have 30 sockeyes filleted into 60 packages to seal, then I go to a friend’s house.  They actually LIKE people to use their machine, because it justifies the $1000-2000 they spent on it.  I bring my own bags, leave them with some of the fish/meat/berries and of course a 6-pack of Alaskan Amber.

[Gary Dunckel]

I originally bought a cheaper Foodsaver V2244, which worked great…until it didn’t. I got over 5 years of fairly steady use with that one (2-3 times a week for sealing 4-8 bags). I called Foodsaver to see what might be up, and I got to talk to a real person.  She suggested that I consider the more macho GameSaver model, which was on sale at the time. She also thought I should buy a couple sets of the rubber gasket that seals things up for a proper vacuum, to replace the one in the V2244 and to have another for later. You see, these gaskets get tired after considerable use, rendering the machine useless. That’s all it took to get the V2244 performing like new. Bottom line here: whichever brand you choose, be sure that they also sell the sealing gasket separately, as you will likely need to replace the original one in time.

@David–I think my Gamesaver is more like a Buick than a Chevy. But you, sir, are the leader in volume of stuff sealed and stored. I think a bunch of us should drop by unannounced sometime, and, you know, suggest that we have a salmon BBQ. We just know that you’ll have enough to feed us all. Then you’ll talk your good buddy boat guy into taking several of us out to catch some halibut. We’ll have another Kenai hoo-how to pay you back.

[David Thomas]

Gary,

Yes, they make a range of machines.  And I completely agree with your care and feeding instructions.  Also, I’ve found the more I use paper towels to blot up the fish/bear juice, the more trouble-free operation I have.

Sure, come on up.  Manfred has been the most consistent taking me up on that.  He’s shown up with his Brady-Bunch-sized blended family and we served them halibut, salmon, caribou, and bear sausage/pastrami/stew.  Alas, I couldn’t sell the stew to some of those Californians, even though it was free-range, grass-fed, non-antibiotic, hormone-free, and sustainably harvested.  I should have told them it was organic beef and they would have loved it.  Other times he comes up with only the carnivores and we go out for bear, and/or halibut and he’s been successful with salmon in (of course, it being Manfred) his pack raft!

I do bring smoked salmon to all GGGs (Samuel P Taylor) and BPL death marches (Grand Canyon) I attend.

I have been pondering hosting a GGG on our 13 acres.  There are variety of us up here and if I give enough warning, maybe it would tempt some of you “Outside” people to The Last Frontier.

[Author]

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