Anyone familiar with "Seal-a-Meal" or "Food Saver"?

[islesgirl]

Hello rawbies. I would like to buy one of these to vacuum seal & then freeze my own garden greens. Is anyone out there familiar with either of these two products and what is your experience with them? Many thanks for any help.

[GoingtoRAW]

Hello rawbies. I would like to buy one of these to vacuum seal & then freeze my own garden greens. Is anyone out there familiar with either of these two products and what is your experience with them? Many thanks for any help.

I bought a Seal a Meal many, many years ago and I LOVED IT! I don't have one now but the funny thing is yesterday I was thinking about getting another one. I don't know what happened to the one I had but...it was great. On Sunday evenings I would prepare my meals for the week and freeze them. When I would get home from work, I just grabbed them out of the freezer and heated them up. All of the meals tasted like they were prepared fresh that day! I haven't tried it with raw foods. Let us know how that goes. Good luck!

I recommend it.:D

[buffalogal]

I love my Food Saver. It's great especially at this time of year...I use it alot for freezing fruits and vegetables. For instance, I wash blueberries and let them dry. Then I spread them out on a cookie sheet and freeze them. (This way they don't get all squashed together.) Once they're frozen, I pop them into a Food Saver bag and vacuum seal them. Then back in the freezer they go. I use them in my smoothies all winter...saves a ton of money. With them vacuum sealed, there's no "freezer burn" to worry about. I do this with berries, cherries, melons, tomatoes, corn, oranges, apples, etc., etc., etc. Works for me!! Happy vacuum sealing!!:D

[islesgirl]

GoingtoRaw, thank you so much for taking time from your busy life to give me your experience with Seal-a-Meal. I'm glad you have found it so useful. But I opted for the "Food Saver" today, as it was reduced by $50 and was actually cheaper than the "Seal-a-Meal" If I don't like it I have 90 days in which to return it.

buffalogal I appreciate your listing all the foods you freeze by sealing them first with your "Food Saver" which I just bought as stated above. I hope it isn't too difficult to learn how to operate. I am feeling so overwhelmed these days with trying to "uncook" as well as get everything else done around my home. Yesterday I sure could have used this machine as I had tons of greens from my garden to wash, bag, suck the air out of as best I could with a straw, and then freeze. Now I have my "Food Saver" for my next batch of greens which should be ready in a week or two. Thanks so much, both of you rawbies, and have a great day.:D

Sue.

[GoingtoRAW]

[QUOTE=islesgirl;439467]GoingtoRaw, thank you so much for taking time from your busy life to give me your experience with Seal-a-Meal. I'm glad you have found it so useful. But I opted for the "Food Saver" today, as it was reduced by $50 and was actually cheaper than the "Seal-a-Meal" If I don't like it I have 90 days in which to return it.

Islegirl, I will be looking for the most economical machine believe me. When I bought the Seal-a-Meal that was wayyyyy back in the early '80's (don't mean to date myself-almost makes me want to cry), but that was a long time ago. I am not loyal to any machine - I just wanted you to know you can feel comfortable with the food savers. They are great time savers too!;)

[LotsaRaw]

I LOVE it! Everything in my freezer is vacuum packed! I'll be out of town for a few days, so am cleaning up my perishables (read - cut, freeze, vac pack) that will not go into smoothies in the next couple days. Also, I keep my nuts, cacao powder, nibs, almond flour, in the freezer packaged this way. I just cut off a corner, shake out what I need, then seal it back up. I have also used this for pesto when I had 5# of fresh basil to play with. The seal just does not let any weird flavor in, not to mention freezer burn free food!

Any recommendations on what should NOT be frozen?

[Coonlie]

We have a Food Saver and one thing I've found is that it's hard to seal really wet or juicy food because the liquid gets sucked up into the seal area and leaves gaps that don't seal.

Anyone else experience this? Have a solution? Otherwise, I love the Food Saver.

[rawviveyourself]

I asked for one for Christmas after I read this recipe for raw sushi using the food sealer:
http://veganmenu.blogspot.com/2008/08/raw-food-thursday-sushi.html

[LotsaRaw]

The Seal-a-Meal has a "moist" switch that keeps it from sucking out the liquid. Maybe check the owner's manual to see if something like that is hidden :)

[DebB]

Hi Coonlie ~ I have the answer for Food Saving your wet items. Place them in the FS bag, but don't seal it yet. Lay the bag flat in the freezer until frozen solid (I generally do this overnight) and then seal away - it works perfectly!

I also like to flash freeze items such as bing cherries or banans that would typically get smashed during the vacuum process. I flash freeze (laying them out on a tray overnight in the freezer) and then put in a bag and seal.

We've had our FS for about 7 years and it's one of thos appliances that has truly paid for itself and then some - and that I would replace tomorrow if it konked out.

I just froze 3 avocadoes yesterday. I scooped out the avocado, 1 at a time, mashed it with a little lemon juice, placed it in a container, froze overnight, popped it out of the container and FS'd. I do the same with pineapple and mangoes for my smoothies. I process all the pineapple in my food processor (same with mango) and divide it up into containers, freeze, pop out and then FS. I do this with baby coconuts as well.

I do it with fresh herbs, citrus zest - I even freeze oranges (halved) if we're not going to eat them all before they go bad and FS them all.

I used to belong to the Yahoo group on Food Savers - lol.

Yep - love our FOOD SAVER! *Ü*

[LotsaRaw]

Deb,

have you frozen apples?? Have half a bag that I need to do something with before Tuesday...

[DebB]

I have frozen apples (we used to have our own trees), but to be honest - not since going raw. I used to freeze them to bake into pies and desserts.

I haven't made a dehydrated apple dessert recipe yet, so I'm unsure if once frozen they'd be okay for this? I assume, "yes" - but I don't know.

What I would think would be great is to make up the apples into raw apple sauce and freeze that.

I hope others chime in who have successfully used frozen apples in raw dishes.

Me? If I needed to use them up, I would just go ahead and freeze them and see. That's what I did with the herbs and they're great in dehydrated dishes, whereas normally they would have been compost. *Ü*

[raweater]

I haven't read all replies but I do have a food saver, I don't know about the seal a meal but the food saver allows you to vacuum seal:
-Plastic bags
-Standard and Wide Mouth Mason jars (one of my most regular uses as they are reusable and not made of plastic)
-Plastic canisters and containers made by the same company as the machine
-Glass bottles like wine bottles (with optional bottle adapters)
-Universal lids allow you to vaccum seal any container like cans (not that we'd use canned food) or non standard glass jars regardless of it's opening as long as the container can withstand the pressure of a vacuum

If you plan on using it with bags make sure to get a model that has a manual seal control button, some cheaper models will just suck until there's nothing that can be sucked out anymore and then seal the bag, I had bought one of these cheaper models first and returned it because when I tried to seal zucchini pasta it squished it and sucked all the water out of the zucchini, dehydrating it in seconds. With the new one I got I can press the "Seal" button when I want so as soon as it's done getting the air out I can press the button before it starts suckign the water out of the food. But I most often use mason jars to vacuum seal with it and since the jar doesn't change shape it doesn't extract water even under full vacuum pressure.

[Coonlie]

The Seal-a-Meal has a "moist" switch that keeps it from sucking out the liquid. Maybe check the owner's manual to see if something like that is hidden :)


Great idea! Who would have thought to read the owner's manual! :o

And Deb, thanks for the great tips! I end up just freezing soft and/or juicy foods without FS'ing them, but your idea to quick freeze, then FS is great! I'll use mine more now!

Thanks!

[DebB]

You're sure welcome Coonlie ~ gotta love this Food Saver! It's one of my favorite, most used appliances. *Ü*

[buffalogal]

Mine too!!:)

[MelissaO]

We have a Food Saver and one thing I've found is that it's hard to seal really wet or juicy food because the liquid gets sucked up into the seal area and leaves gaps that don't seal.

Anyone else experience this? Have a solution? Otherwise, I love the Food Saver.

I have an old food saver and it doesnt have a switch on it for moist so I either put a bounty paper towel just under where the seal line is of the bag (that way if liquid does come up the paper towel catches it ) or I will put the item in the freezer overnight then seal the next day like mentioned already.



Lotsaraw for apples I would juice them and freeze the juice, or if you are going to freeze a apple whole maybe it could be used for smoothie instead of ice...I dunno how a frozen apple would turn out upon defrost, same thing with pears, cucumbers things with very delicate flesh.

[rawredbone]

I was thinking of trying this. How do you thing the juice would come out I mean as in would it be more water than juice taste wise?

Lotsaraw for apples I would juice them and freeze the juice, or if you are going to freeze a apple whole maybe it could be used for smoothie instead of ice...I dunno how a frozen apple would turn out upon defrost, same thing with pears, cucumbers things with very delicate flesh.[/QUOTE]

[sewrev]

I have the food saver. I really love it.. To seal something with a lot of liquid I take a paper towel fold it to size and place it in the bag just under where I will be sealing the bag. When the machine starts sucking the air and liquid, the paper towel collects the liquid allowing the machine to seal the bag well. Works great .

[tvillemom]

I'm so glad someone told me how to foodsaver my avo's!! I never thought of freezing them first! NOW I will be doing this instead of letting them go bad!

I also use the foodsaver containers.....they are great for spinach and other salad greens, they keep for weeks, instead of days!!

Best of luck!

[Colorawdo girl]

I got a little reynolds brand I think.Its a little appliance for ten dollars and you buy the bags and it sucks all the air out of the bag and tightens the bag right up.Its amazing and no freezer burn.Redo after you take some food out of it.
Freezing reduces some nutrients but not terrible.

[islesgirl]

Glad I got my "Food Saver". I grew my first garden this past summer 08 and froze lots of greens with it. Love it, love it!:D

[DebB]

Glad I got my "Food Saver". I grew my first garden this past summer 08 and froze lots of greens with it. Love it, love it!:D

Hi islegirl ~ Can you post how you froze your greens?

We want to do that this summer as organic greens are so spendy here. I'm interested to know the process you followed to get them frozen.

Thanking you in advance! *Ü*

[islesgirl]

Hi Deb - Well, I'll just tell you what I did - don't think I'm an expert at this or anything. The greens were from my first garden in 27 years and I was so proud of it. All I grew was greens! Beets (greens), carrots (tops), kale, swiss chard, collards, parsley, spinach and romaine. I washed them off - that takes time. Then I simply drained them and stuffed the food saver bags with them and sucked out the air using the "moist" setting and popped them into the freezer. The only problem was that if I'd frozen quite a bit per bag I had to cut it or tear it in half and that wasn't always easy. I used these greens to make GS in my vitamix every single day. Of course, if you are using them for smoothies it is much easier to use a smaller amount per bag but the bags are not cheap so I often simply take what I need from a well-stuffed bag and then re-seal it. Does this help?:) I really can't afford organic from the store, but I saw a documentary last night about "sludge" being poured out on farmers' fields and it was scary and made me think I'd better find a way to cut corners and come up with the money for organic. We'll see. Or I will have another garden this summer.

Sue.

[DebB]

Hi Sue ~ Yes - that [I]does[I] help a lot! I wasn't sure which way to go on freezing the greens. It's something I haven't done before. And what a savings it will be, we $pend a lot on green$!

Thank you Sue, I appreciate your posting back with how you froze your greens. *Ü*

[pixie_333]

so it's not true you have to blanch veggies before freezing? or does this not apply to vacum sealing?

i was reading about it last week and everything i read said just fruits don't have to be blanched or cooked.

[iamacranberry]

Course you don't have to blanch veggies before freezing...I never do! But if you buy frozen vegetables from the store, they'll probably have been blanched.

[DebB]

I'm another one that doesn't blanch the veggies I freeze. I do use the Food Saver, but even if I didn't use it - I wouldn't blanch first.

Same with fruits - I don't blanch any of them and I freeze just about every fruit there is - ha.. *Ü*

[pixie_333]

i was just asking :)

i forget now the reasons it was mentioned to blanch veggies. so only thing i left in memory was if i was going to freeze anything at all it would just be fruits.
but if you guys are doing it and find it ok.. then cool and perhaps i'll consider it if i ever freeze.

[k8sl8]

I used to have a ton of apples and routinely made sauce and froze in the FS. worked perfectly. Kids ate applesauce all winter.

I also did quartered apples. They were soft when they were thawed, bit worked in recipes, so would also work well in smoothies. a little moisture (water works and many swear by lemon juice or another citric acid) to coat them before freezing will help retain color.

as for blanching, I believe it is purely an aesthetic thing. It holds the color and makes the thawed veggies "pretty".

[Bridie]

Thanks so much for this suggestion. I was grating my zucchini, freezing it on a tray, then bagging it. Now I'm going to bag the grated zucchini, bag it, freeze it then use my Food Saver. I just shrink wrapped my kale, for green smoothies and did it from raw, and not freezing first (bagged enough for a large smoothie for 2 days). I recycle my washed FS bags I can't use any longer.