Kitchen

[house_cat]

I love my Food Saver. It's great for all the advertised reasons, but I enjoy finding new ways to use it.  Today I sealed a few cut up, deliciously ripe, organic strawberries.  I didn't vacuum them, I just sealed them and made the bag as narrow as possible.  After it was sealed I poked a bunch of holes in the bag with a fork and used it to infuse a pitcher of iced tea.  It worked beautifullly 👍

If you have clever ways to use the Food Saver I'd love to hear about them.

Thank you!

[LizzieInSRQ]

If you live in an area that has the possibilities for hurricanes or floods... "food saver" your important documents. Protects.

[CamilleP]

Oooh, excellent idea on the doctument preservation, Lizzie! 

My "new" use is similar to the OP's, in that I'm just sealing, not vacuuming.  I bought a bag of peeled garlic cloves at the grocery store recently, and inside the large zip-lock style bag are a bunch of small sealed pouches of ten or so cloves each.  None of my recipes so far has called for that many cloves of garlic, so I use as many as I want and then just put the little pouch in the sealing strip of my Food Saver and seal up the remaining cloves.  There's no way to vacuum that tiny a bag, but at least the cloves are sealed up again and won't dehydrate, and I hope they are less likely to spoil. 

[Mustang Shar]

Would this be a good thing for a 1 person household? Cooking for 1 poses a host of challenges 

[ID2]

Sounds like these tips can be used with with the same results by using much, much cheaper Ziploc baggies. 

[Mothertrucker]

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@Mustang Shar wrote:

Would this be a good thing for a 1 person household? Cooking for 1 poses a host of challenges 

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I am a 1 person household and use mine a lot..I might smoke a pork butt and then shred and seal Single serving packs for latter, buy bulk chicken breasts on sale, fresh corn, you get the idea...

Make a full lasagna and freeze serving sizes ...Casseroles...you name it..

[Zhills]

I just got one and I'm learning.  Keep the suggestions coming.  

I bought block cheese this week.  It is sealed.  Would using the food saver to wrap them make them last longer?  As is, opened, or rewrapped works best?  TIA

[CamilleP]

Not for long-term frozen storage!   More than a couple weeks in a cheap plastic bag with no vacuum and heat seal and you might as well throw the food away, it's inedible!  Any money you might "save" by not buying a Foodsaver you lose many times over by throwing out ruined food.

[CamilleP]

Absolutely!  I'm half of a two person household, and we always buy in bulk and sub-divide to freeze.  My favorite is smoked turkey.  Every November our local university's meat science club sells them as a fund-raiser, so I buy one or two.  We eat some fresh, but by far most of the meat gets frozen.  DH and I work together to take all the meat off the bones and package it in one pound lots, vacuum and seal, then into the freezer, and I have the foundation of the best chili you ever tasted ready to go, just cut open the package, put the frozen meat in the pressure cooker, add the rest of the ingredients, seal the pot, start it up, and half an hour later you have hot dinner.

[CamilleP]

For cheese, after I open it the first time, I transfer it from it's original wrapping to a Foodsaver bag that's somewhat oversized.  Next time I want to use that cheese, I remove only enough of the package to cut off the seal, use some cheese, then re-seal the bag.  If you leave enough extra "tail" of plastic, you never have to re-package the block, you can just keep re-sealing.