Vacuum Sealer

[whynotwalk]

I just searched the forum using the terms "cryovac" and "vacuum sealer". I got some positive impressions about doing your own vacuum sealing to home-dehyd food. But does anyone have any recommendations regarding brands, size, expected price?

ebay has some starting at about $60, with the $100 mark pretty standard. Any suggestions welcome,

cheers

Peter

[sthughes]

I just bought one, technically for Mum for mothers day as she wanted one, but I'll be borrowing it regularly. I only thought of it at the last minute so paid $219 at Harvey Norman for a Sunbeam Foodsaver model. It works pretty well, but the bags are a little pricey. Also I'd look at the distance from the edge of the machine to the sealer strip. With the Sunbeam you tend to waste about 15mm of bag each time because the sealer is about that far 'into' the machine and you can't close the lid if anything is in that part of the bag, silly design unless aiming to make a little more money by selling extra bags.

I am tempted to cryovac my sleeping bag just for fun!

[Nuts]

I used mine a lot, vaccing everything from dunny rolls to first aid stuff.. all sorts of foods (puddings heated in the bag go well..) . In the end I dont use it that often, dont carry much food that Really needed it.. Probably nice to have for the non food stuff and the odd bit of frozen meats just the same

My first one was a Sunbeam..It..developed a kink in the sealing wire that let air slowly into the baggies (I kid not) 366 days into its life (and one day over warranty)..

[jose]

I imagine there are many good uses for vacuum sealing but I wonder if these units are worth buying solely for wrapping bushwalking food when you consider the initial cost of the unit, then the ongoing cost for the bags which create quite a heavy wrapping. I find wrapping my dehydrated meals in cling wrap and then putting these meal bundles into one recycled bread bag to prevent any punctures or leaks makes for very lightweight carrying and after even 10 day walks I rarely have more than a soup or noodle bag full of rubbish to take home because the pieces of cling wrap fold up to almost nothing.

I also wrap individual portions of muesli mix in clingwrap for each day and then I reuse the breakfast plastic for wrapping my lunch which I prepare at breakfast time each day. I find this not only a lightweight and ecomnomical way to go but it is also more compact than ziplock bags.

As a bonus I have also found that the gladwrap has been invaluable for blisters between the toes. On a 14 day walk in temperatures around the 30's nothing else I tried helped relieve the pain till I cut some strips of cling wrap and wrapped them around my weepy toes. No more friction and the pain was immediately lessened and my toes started healing from that day on. Sorry to mention toes in the middle of a food subject but I was really impressed! It is also satisfying to find a second and even a third use for anything before it is thrown out - the world's resources are limited.

[alanoutgear]

I bought an Ezidry dehydator ($280) and a vacuum sealer ($70 including two rolls of bags) earlier this year and they are the best toys I've ever bought (well, nearly ....). Making your own meals, dehydrating and vacuum sealing them is a hoot, and the food tastes great. It does take a bit to rehydrate, but if you start when you get to camp, the meals will be ready to heat for dinner. My spag bol with the new Barilla Piccolini fast cook pasta (3 min simmer, and 3 min in the hot water) and parmagiana cheese would get me through on Master Chef. I've also got a few of those re-sealable Vacuum Bags from EziVac (which is what I started with), and I use the big ones to store flatbread. I've done a test and they are still flexible and well edible after a month sealed in the bag, although my daughter tells me this is more to do with the preservatives in flat bread than the vaccuum. Whatever the case, sitting down to a fresh wrap made with salami, fresh salad vegies and flat bread is a great lunch on the track. I have had a few issues with the re-sealable valves on the EziVac bags, and the manual pump weighs very little so you can carry it with you and re-seal the bread and other food each time you open the bag. Did the OT in March and evening meals were spag bol, beef curry, thai chicken curry, chicken and vegie casserole, beef stroganoff, beef casserole and braised steak. I cook the meals as per normal, but don't thicken them before dehydrating. About 120 gm of dehydrated meal (with extra vegies, rice, or noodles) is plenty for two. Also, you can't dehydrate fatty meals like curried sausages - I tried and wasn't game to eat the result. It''s my only failure.

[melot]

I also have an Ezidri dehydrator plus a sunbeam vacuum sealer which came with a bonus of 2 rolls that make customised vacuum sealed bags. The rolls are more economical than the standard sized bags and I will source them when they run out ( probably from http://www.natureswonderland.com.au where I bought extra solid sheets and perforated sheets for my dehydrator.... they have a mail order business based in QLD that I found on line). I dehydrate nearly all our meals for multi day walks I make similar meals to alanoutgear, just cooking up doubles of a normal meal at home except for cutting all the components up fairly small, and then dehydrating the half we don't eat that night... so much cheaper than commercially available dehydrated meals.Since using the vacuum sealer our meals have kept better, particularly over hot humid summer weather. Previously I had tried to manually squeeze the air out from around our dehydrated meals but had needed to throw out a couple of mince (Spag. bolognaise & chilli con carne) style meals as they didn't look good after a month or so... Now the combination of eliminating as much fat as possible by using really lean mince, and then rinsingthe cooked mince under hot water before adding the rest of the sauce to it, and sealing the final dehydrated product with the vacuum sealer seems to have improved the keeping time of our meals. I also dehydrate and then vacuum seal extra vegetables to add to our meals, especially if I am using a commercially available base like a packet risotto or pasta. The vacuum sealed, dehydrated veg keep their colour and flavour really well and lift a boring meal into a very acceptable quality... as well as making them look much more appetizing . To sum up, I've been really, really happy with our Dehydrator and Vacuum sealer, have lent them to lots of other walking friends and we get lots of envious, hungry, wistful looks from other walkers as we tuck into our meals on the track.

[johnat]

Late entry in to this thread, but ... here goes.

As a part of our "life" we already have a commercial style vacuum unit. So the initial expense was absorbed by our business. So, it was a no-brainer to use this unit for sealing our trail food. Made things so much easier, we could design our own meals rather than paying from someone else to design a meal and create it and seal it. We could incorporate foods we liked, and not bother with esoteric stuff that someone else thought would be nice.

Ferinstance, we took soups created with dried veges and dehydrated chicken strips all in a vacuum bag. We added water at breakfast time, carried it in a sealed screwtop jar until lunchtime, cooked it at lunch and waltzed through the rest of the day fully fed!

[John Sheridan]

Does it real matter what brand you get even the cheapest ones will vac and seal right, don't mind spending 100 bucks on something I will be using. If brand does matter what brand would you recommend.


Also I assume there are special bags you need and where would you buy they bags from, I assume you can buy them from various places for various prices


Thanks.