Vacuum Sealers for freezing

I'm looking at vaccum sealers for the purpose of stocking up the freezer and such. There's a huge price variation, and I don't really understand what is and isn't worthwhile to look for.

I absolutely don't mind paying more for a better tool, but don't know enough about them to sort out the "better tool" part. Since the GRM braintrust is one of the friendliest and most generally knowledgeable groups of people I know, this seems like the place to ask.

So, what are the key features to have (and to avoid)? Bonus points for specific recommendations if possible.

I have nothing to add except dont get your hootus stuck in one...

I have had one that I bought from costco about a decade ago. Still works great. Perfect for when you buy all your meat from costco (large quantities) and my BIL borrows it when he gets back from his multi-day ocean fishing trips.

Usage fee is usually some big fat yellow tail steaks

Normally I use ziplock bags and submerge them in a sink or bowl full of water with just the corner unzipped and poking out of the water. The water pressure pushes out allllllmost all of the air. More than enough for sous vide and such.

They are great for vacuum bagging small composite lay ups.

This is what the wife uses.

The starter package with the pump was about $15. The bags are pretty cheap and it works.

Toyman01 wrote: This is what the wife uses. The starter package with the pump was about $15. The bags are pretty cheap and it works.

I've gotten decent results from those for short-medium term storage, but less so for longer.

ppddppdd wrote: Normally I use ziplock bags and submerge them in a sink or bowl full of water with just the corner unzipped and poking out of the water. The water pressure pushes out allllllmost all of the air. More than enough for sous vide and such.

Not sure about for long term use, but that's pretty damn clever wither way. I'll definitely experiment with it some.

As far as sous vide that's on my list of projects for the future.

We have a "Food Saver" brand machine. Love it to tears, although it's pretty wasteful with the rolling material. Basically, you need to put about .75" of material through the sealer portion before it will activate itself which means you're throwing away about 1.5" of the roll for each thing you vacuum seal.

Other than that, though, it works well for pretty much everything we've tried in it. Great for camping, too.

wae wrote: We have a "Food Saver" brand machine. Love it to tears, although it's pretty wasteful with the rolling material. Basically, you need to put about .75" of material through the sealer portion before it will activate itself which means you're throwing away about 1.5" of the roll for each thing you vacuum seal. Other than that, though, it works well for pretty much everything we've tried in it. Great for camping, too.

Agree 100%

The foodsaver is the one I have, and I absolutely love it. I use the bags, the plastic storage containers, with an attachment I can seal mason jars, it even has an attachment for resealing bottles with vacuum stoppers. Also, the foodsaver bags can be used like a boil-in-bag for cooking veggies in a pot of boiling water. You don't always have to use the special bags on a roll, you can reseal a regular cellophane or mylar potato chip bag too.Great for repacking bearings and storing them for later too.

Hot tip: If you freeze thick cuts of meat, lay them out on a greased plastic cutting board in the freezer for about an hour before vacuum sealing them. That way they don't get squished into weird shapes. We often cook boneless chicken from frozen on the grill.

Another one for FoodSaver. We use ours for everything. Meat, veggies, and the wife even puts the pumpkin she cooks down in the bags.

She puts X number of cups of cooked pumpkin in a bag and when she wants to make pumpkin pie one bag will make 2 pies.

We pressure can most of our tomatoes, but I have made tomato sauce and froze it in foodsaver bags. Makes it very easy to stack them in the freezer and takes less space than plastic containers.

I have a really early Food Saver, like from 1994 when they first had an infomercial. It is still trucking. It has some foibles, like every 4th time you use it, it won't suck right but you just let up on it and readjust and start over.

I've been happy. I only use it for occasional things though. If I buy hamburger or some other quick consumable I don't go to the trouble of vacuuming it. I do use it when I catch a nice salmon, or find a good bargain on beef loins... something that I know will sit in the freezer for a long time waiting for a special occasion.

4cylndrfury wrote: I have nothing to add except dont get your hootus stuck in one...

again...

Looked around a bit more...

How many of those suggesting Food Savers have a newer one?

I ask this because "Our old one rocked, the new one not so much..." seems to come up semi-frequently.

keethrax wrote: How many of those suggesting Food Savers have a newer one?

We bought ours new 2 years ago and have not had any problems.

Hal wrote:

keethrax wrote: How many of those suggesting Food Savers have a newer one?

We bought ours new 2 years ago and have not had any problems.

Thanks!

Hal wrote:

keethrax wrote: How many of those suggesting Food Savers have a newer one?

We bought ours new 2 years ago and have not had any problems.

Same here, my current one is about 2 years old and we use it regularly. The last one I had was still working fine, bought used off craigslist and sold for what I had in it 2 years later. Wouldn't have sold it at all, but I got the new one for Christmas.

keethrax wrote: Looked around a bit more... How many of those suggesting Food Savers have a newer one? I ask this because "Our old one rocked, the new one not so much..." seems to come up semi-frequently.

I'm not sure what is newer versus older, but ours is about a year and a half or two years old.

Food saver here also. But like others I have one of the old models. Crappy thing is my dogs found a box of rolls the wife left out. They chewed up four brand new bag rolls.

Oh I got a buddy with one of the newer Cabelas ones and he loves it. Thing is a beast. He hunts and fishes everything under the sun and has a ton of wild game and fish in his freezer.

is the food saver still the bee's Knee's? researching those and a freezer, not sure if waiting for black Friday is the ticket to cheap on these.

Still love ours and it's still working great

Just bought yet another myself, this one is a little fancier. It has a "wet" mode to seal wet stuff(like fresh pork butts), and the accessories nozzle which is an amazing tool on it's own, especially for canning and bulk snacks.

I really recommend getting the expandable bag rolls. They have like a 4 inch fold in them to stretch around bigger/awkward shaped things, like pork butts or whole briskets and just as strong in the freezer.

We finally bought a Food Saver about 6 months ago. I don't know why we waited so long. It works great, saves a ton of freezer space not using hard containers, and we're seeing a lot less waste from freezer burn.

The one we bought came with some sample bags and a small roll of the plastic. I bought two large rolls on amazon that were not the Food Saver brand, but look and feel the same, and were about a 1/3 the price.

In reply to RevRico:

Used to have a Foodsaver v3820, worked great. Bought it used had it a month or so and sold it on. The cost of the bags sort of kills it. And took up a lot of counter space. One of those things that the experience doesn't match the expectations. Also if you are really cheap milk bags work great in them, basically free.