Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
I got my first vacuum sealer at a Boy Scouts yard sale,
complete with instructions and a bunch of bags, for $3.
Evidently, people often purchase sealers thinking they will be
handy and use them once or twice, and then they end up in the
yard sale bin. It may not be practical to wait around for a
sealer to show up at a yard sale while harvest season comes
and goes—but it never hurts to look.
There is another big reason why these sealers end up in the
yard sale bin: the price of bags. The name-brand bags at the
store that carry the same name as the sealer you buy will cost
over $0.50 each. You don't have to do a lot of math to see
that spending that much on just the bag to store a product
(like broccoli) that you could buy frozen at the store for $0.99
isn't a winning proposition. I'll give you some solutions to
that problem in the next section.
There are two suitable sealers on the market in various
configurations available at department stores—the
Seal-a-Meal and the FoodSaver. I've found both to be
adequate, though you will find the FoodSaver a bit more
expensive. I prefer the Seal-a-Meal since its design allows it
to work better with a wide variety of bags. These are
light-duty home-use units. They work fine for the amount of
freezing that I do for the carbohydrates and vegetables for a
family of three because we tend to freeze in relatively small
batches of 10 or fewer packages at a time. Heavy-duty
commercial units are available—but you should hold off on
these until you see if the less expensive home-use units will
meet your needs. Certainly they will work fine as you ramp
up for the first couple of years.
Bags
