Have you ever vacuum sealed your food?

[themayor]

Next week I am going to experiment with dehydrating and vacuum sealing food. I've dehydrated fruit and meat before but now I will add veggies and vacuum seal it using Mylar bags and an iron? Has anyone done this or something similar? If it works I can keep a lot more food in a smaller space and be more mobile.

 

[woodstock]

Is the mylar better than just the regular sealing bags?

How do you draw a vacuum? I use one of the machines specifically for that and they have the heat strip that seals the bag ends automatically.

 

[heyitsshane]

PM me.

 

[vinhtvu2]

I got those Foodsaver bag system. It came with the bags, and the machine vacuum and heat seals as well. I like it a lot for storage. It also seals cans and containers with the right attachment... Accessories gets expensive though...

 

[obiwan]

Use oxygen absorbers for longer term storage.

 

[themayor]

I've read that the vacuum on the foodsaver dies rather quickly.

I do plan on using oxygen absorbers.

 

[woodstock]

So how do you use the oxygen absorbers?
Don't know about others experience, my vacuum machine has been fine so far but I'm not doing it everyday or even every week.

 

[unclear.six]

I vacuum seal my ammo.

 

[fistfullaholla]

I have the foodsealer machine but only keep things short term. Each month I slice a Turkey, Ham, and Roast into portions and seal them then freeze. I got into this because deli meats are so full of unhealthy crap and I usually take sandwiches to work. Saves me a lot of $$ too (more for guns!)
Like Unclear Six I seal a lot of loose ammo in vacuum bags too and it works great.

 

[Chris Mac]

Yes - we vacuum seal our own food.

We've got Foodsaver machine, and it has an accessory port. We hook the hose up and purchased two Ball jar adapters. We can seal widemouth jars and regular jars. The adapters were $10 each on Amazon. You simply put whatever you want in the jar - dehdrated fruits, veggies, premixed stuff, powdered milk, etc. Put in a small oxygen absorber packet. Hook up the adapter and vacuum seal the jar. Works wonderfully.

We also have a book called "Dinner Is In The Jar" that gives recipes for sealing everything together in one jar. You simply empty the jar into boiling water, etc. and it's like an entire meal. So we buy the ingredients in bulk and can make 10-12 jars at a time.

The mylar bags work much better than plastic for shelf storage. All plastic bags allo oxygen and moisture to pass through over time. Mylar less so. You simply fill the mylar bag, add in the appropriate sized oxygen absorber, compress it to get the air out, iron it shut. Over the next 24 hours the bag will look like it's vacuum sealed as the oxygen absorber does the work.

We do mylar bags, and then for larger quantities like rice, we pop the bags into food grade buckets to pest-proof them. We'll be trying this on bulk pasta next.

Never thought of sealing ammo. I put it in ammo cans with moisture absorber packets. We're changing over to Waterbricks since they are much more stable when stacked.