/ck/ - Food & Cooking

120+ gigabytes can fit into an area smaller than my pinky nail and yet we can not reliably vacuum seal for cheap at home still

this is a dark future

>>6412076
ziplock bags, press out the air, and go shopping more often

>>6412076
I just keep a little bit of a ziplock bag open before I seal it and breathe in the excess air.

It works I guess. Makes my lungs and diaphragm nice and strong

>>6412076
i bought one at costco and, although its tricky to learn how to use, it never fails anymore when i dont overstuff the bags and i reuse the bags making it pretty cheap.

i maybe buy a box of bags every few years.

bought it over 3 years ago iirc

buy cheap shit and you get what you pay for fucknuggets

OP, most of the "research" you did is simply finding that people are morons when it comes to using vacuum sealers. "bunch of tricks" and "sometimes works sometimes doesnt, and "seeping into the bags" is all user error and has nothing to do with the machine.

>wastes bag length
stop cutting your bags so long

>sometimes works/ air seeps into bags
keep the seal area of the bag clean. If the seal area has food in it then the plastic won't seal properly

Beyond that there's really two options:
The type you posted in OP are less expensive to buy. (I have a $65 Foodsaver and it works great). The downsides are that the bags are more costly, and you cannot use the machine to seal liquids in bags.

A chamber type sealer is much more expensive to buy. However they have advantages in that the bags are much cheaper, and you can seal liquids in the bags which is great for marinading meats.

Yknow you can get a pretty good near vaccuum seal with a ziploc bag and a container of water? Put the food in the bag then dip it into the water with the top of the bag mostly but not entirely zipped. The weight of the water collapses the bag, pushing out air. Then you zip it shut and voila.

>>6413848

You can certainly get out most of the air, but it's nowhere close to an actual vacuum in the true sense of the word. Depending on what you are doing that may or may not matter.

I like ziploc bags for soft foods which would be crushed using a proper vacuum sealer. On the other hand, the vacuum sealer is better for packing food with a marinade because the vacuum helps the marinade penetrate the meat better.

Ziplock and a straw op.

I buy things on sale/manager's special because, believe it or not, it's actually cheaper than bulk purchasing
. Then, I just cut the things into 100g-ish portions and put'em into foldover cheap-o sandwich baggies and shove them into the freezer.
I seldom (never?) deal with freezer burn. I can recall only once where something I stored this way was damaged by freezer burn.
Vac sealers aren't necessary.

why can't you just chuck stuff in bags?

>>6413954

If you're not keeping stuff for very long then freezer burn is a problem, though this doesn't matter for short-term storage.

If you have a chamber-type sealer or one of the jar adapters for the one in OP's photo then you can vacuum-marinade meat, which greatly speeds up the marinading process, as well as how deep the marinade penetrates into the food.

>>6413971
I thawed out a pork shoulder this February past that was in there since July of 2013. It was still perfectly fine. I made curried pork pot roast out of it.

The other day, I thawed out a boneless chicken breast that was in there since October 2012 and it was also perfectly fine. I sliced it up and made country captain with it.

Both the chicken and the pork were stored without the use of a vac sealer.

>>6413985

I doubt they were "perfectly" fine. They were probably quite degraded in both flavor and moisture content, but you didn't notice because you used the meat in highly seasoned, sauce-rich dishes that cover up the original flavor and texture of the meat.

Try this: get a piece of meat that's been stored that long in your freezer. Take it out. Do a basic preparation like pan-frying a chicken breast, steak, or chop. Or if it's a larger cut then roast it in the oven. Don't drown it in sauce or stew it to hell and back--do a preparation where you can actually taste the meat itself. Now compare that to fresh--the difference will be obvious.

But hey, if you're happy with what you're doing now then by all means keep doing what you're doing!

>>6414006
I recentlyish roasted a turkey thigh I bought, deboned and froze in 2013. That was this January past. It was juicy and flavoursome. Does that count?

I bought the turkey for 29¢/lb around Thanksgiving that year then broke it down and froze it, roasting only the breast (that I deboned and trussed) for TG and using the rib bones, back/neck, thigh bones and wingtips to make stock and the stock and giblets for gravy. Went down a treat, by the way.
The thigh I roasted in January was just for me, though, and it was also very good. After roasting, meats, I tend to let them rest in a post-marinade (dunno what else to call it) for 10 minutes or so before slicing and serving. That marinade was olive oil and garlic blitzed with freshly-powdered rosemary, chilies, lemon zest and peppercorn (all dry). Maybe my marinade-rest negates the supposed dryness?

>>6414469
>remembering the exact price you paid per pound of turkey from a year and a half ago

jesus man

>>6414006
My gf's smoker mom grills year old frozen chicken breast for dinner like twice a week. She is always really light on the seasoning because she's scared of overseasoning for the nonsmokers eating. Always comes out somewhat bland, but the meat itself seems perfectly normal.

>>6414006
>highly seasoned, sauce-rich dishes that cover up the original flavor and texture of the meat.
>Don't drown it in sauce or stew it to hell and back--do a preparation where you can actually taste the meat itself.

White person that always underseasons his meat detected. Some people can actually taste more than 2 flavors at a time.

>>6414469
Thats a cheap as fuck bird man
Where do you shop?

I paid 130 for mine at target, it works fine. I buy the off brand bags that come in bulk rolls on amazon and cut them myself. I seal about 40-50lbs of meat at a time and freeze, and it's always as fresh as when I first sealed it. I've been using it for about 6 months with no issue.

>>6415507
That was at Bottom Dollar. Aldi bought them out and closed all their locations because they were threatened by their business model. :-(
This past TG, I wasn't able to get one that cheap. It was 55¢/lb, so still wasn't a bad price, I guess.

>>6415240
I remembered the turkey weighed 14½lbs and cost me $4.21 and did the maths to get the price per pound. I don't know why I remember $4.21 and how much it weighed, though. Maybe I've a tinge of the 'tism.