Vacuum sealed food

One of the "hacks" I do is to use a straw to draw out the air in a bag before I freeze some food.
This reduces freezer burn that occurs when air is present.
Its a bit crude, and I've been considering getting a vacuum sealer that removes all the air. I do resent paying for packaging , and with the vacuum sealer you buy consumable bags.

I don't want to do that

I like the above video and their experimentation method, also the one below too:

I'e been thinking of ways to preserve food so will think about purchasing a vacuum sealer.
An alternartive video of the one above, a lovely presentation:

So 1 jan 2020 I bought a vacuum sealer, still trying to get my head around it. It is one from the Warehouse for 69$. Definitely bottom of the line.
I'm trying to use it with normal polythene bags, so far with mixed success. I'm sort of getting the vacuum, sort of getting the seal but the bag is too thin so seal melts. Have tried using the ziplock and put it under the first seal (where I have something poking through to help get vacuum

 First time with biltong, not a great success, the bags are thin, so you need to put half of ziplock cutoff piece under the element, then it seals and doesn't melt through the bag. As part of the ziplock is through the seal it still needs a 2nd seal. The 2nd seal melts as well.

 This time I used the 2 parts of the ziplock, one on each of the seals to thicken the plastic so it did not melt through. That works.
I tried using tissue paper (Handy Towel) to act as gap for vacuum but that didn't work, the ziplock ridge did.  So have to use part of ziplock inside bag to get air out
Maybe another test would be to fold over the top seal , so there is 4 layers of plastic, that might make it thick enough not to melt and make a good seal.
Anyway, with ziplock sides under it works. Chillis nicely vacuumed.

I did have trouble to begin with trying to break the vacuum and kept on pulling out the top seal. I need to press the side buttons to release the seal.
Also a comment in the pamphlet that came with the vacuum sealer was using it to seal up Chippy bags after opening. I tried that out and it works fine. A good suggestion. This is just the seal, so still some air in the bag.

I got this for a few reasons, I want to start doing some dehydration of fruit, veges and meats and also to see about marinades for some meats. Sealing in a bag may be a good way to have pre-prepped foods, and if the vacuum bags seal them longer then this is a good way to make use of cheap produce.
 Also, the biltong/Jerky an go mouldy, so having it vacuum sealed preserves it for longer.
Seals arn't that great, it doesn't seem to get to full vacuum and go to seal.

Different vacuum sealer

 I returned this vacuum sealer as it wouldn't maintain the seal on the 3rd Jan.
I then went and got the Food Saver Sunbeam with attachment one with my True Reward points. I had 177 of them, so noly need to pay $23 for the unit.
That has an attachment so you can seal bags in a different way with an attachment.
This video shows a method of sealing a bag inside a bag. It sort of works so far.

I tried the above process on some biscotti that I have in Ziplock bags and it worked, but I didn't thermally seal the bags after and the ziplock did not maintain the vacuum seal that I originally maintained.
I need to try to do vacuum then thermal seal, rather than relying on ziplock for it.

Biltong Sealing with straw

I tried the attachment and the method above to vacuum seal the biltong. I did the beef in the method above but it never got a great vacuum as the creasing of the outer bag closed off the inner bag before a solid vacuum got going. I tried a number of times but couldn't get it to quite work, I got a partial one, and ith the heat seal below the zip lock it kept a good seal. It was particularly bad on curved bits of meat that folded in on themselves, there was a well of air.
So I went back to the straw and suck method with the ziplock bags and found I got a much better seal, then I used the thermal sealer and that worked fine.
The thermal sealer works extremely well on this vacuum sealer compared to the cheap one. You get a good solid, consistent seal on the zip bags, so that is of excellent value if it holds the seal on the other 3 sides.
So, although the in bag vac seal with attachments is a good idea, the method doesn't quite work.
I think I have to try the shower plastic sponge method again.
When using the proper bags (the roll cut to length) I had to have several attempts before I got the seal right ( I was trying with the minimum length of roll). The vacuum gets louder when its working, but just maintains an even frequency if it doesn't.

So I need to try the other methods.
I'm very hapy with the thermal sealer bar. That is of great value. 


Idea of mushrooms for soup. Get when cheap and freeze (maybe use dehydrator