I hate wasting food almost as much as I love saving money. So anything that can help me save money AND food is a good idea in my book. Since those are the key benefits to vacuum sealers, you know I’m going to find the most cost-effective ways to use them.
A vacuum food sealer is basically a small gadget, usually about the size of two boxes of aluminum foil side by side, that literally sucks the air out of the bag of food you’re trying to save. Air is one of the key players in food spoilage, so the more you can remove from your packaging, the longer the food will last.
Can you really save money? Yes, but you need to factor in your food shopping and cooking habits to determine how much.
For example, my family goes through a lot of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, but at $4.50 per pound or more, it can get pricey. That is why I only buy them on sale for $1.99 per pound or less. The catch? To get the deal I have to buy them in the big jumbo packs.
I pick up a package or two and vacuum seal and freeze each breast individually. Because we go through an average two pounds a week, that’s a savings of roughly $364 a year. Also, I usually need two to four breasts for a meal, but chicken breasts are packed in threes. No need to cook extra that may go to waste. Another bonus: If you like to flatten your breasts so they’re even before cooking, you can do so in the sealed bag and prevent poultry juices from splattering all over your kitchen.
It’s much the same with ground beef. I can buy the large sizes at warehouse stores such as Sam’s Club or Costco, then seal and freeze the beef in one-pound or half-pound bags. This technique works for any other cuts of meat, poultry or seafood. Buy in bulk, then seal and freeze in the quantity your family uses them. These savings are well worth the price of the sealer.
Even if you don’t buy in bulk, you can save if you cook in bulk. To save time, I sometimes make two casseroles, meatloaves or pot pies — one for dinner and one to freeze for another night. There’s nothing worse than pulling a bag of sloppy joe filling or bag of macaroni & cheese out of the freezer to find it covered in frost and freezer burn.
Vacuum sealers can keep your dinners airtight and delicious so they end up on your family’s table instead of in the garbage can.
Hate opening up a half-used block of cheese or bag of shredded cheese to find it covered with mold? At nearly $6 per pound, you’re wasting $2 every time you do that. Vacuum-sealed cheese lasts for weeks in the fridge, so no more cash in the trash.
My newest, greatest food to vacuum seal? Lettuce. I have to credit my mom for this tip. She had a three-pack of romaine last in a vacuum-sealed zipper bag for more than two weeks without it browning or wilting. Simply wash, chop and seal well and you can make a fresh salad every day.
On to practical matters: There are two general types of vacuum sealers: countertop and handheld. Each serves slightly different purposes.
Countertop sealers
Countertop sealers can be expensive, rising into the hundreds depending on the features, brand, etc. But a higher price doesn’t necessarily correlate with a better product. You can find a good mid-range quality sealer that will do the job. What should you look for when buying a counter-top sealer?
Features: Some seal just bags, while others have attachments to seal bottles and canisters as well. Consider how you plan to use your sealer before automatically buying one with all the bells and whistles.
Size/space: Where will you store and use your sealer? Some must be kept flat while others can be stored on their side, taking up much less room on your counter.
Bag price: Most bags can be washed and reused to some extent, but if you’re using them for raw meat you’re not going to want to reuse them. So think about how much you will pay for bags. Keep in mind, you’re not limited to the same brand bags as your sealer; you just want to make sure the size and style are the same. For example, here are 100 bags while the name brands are approximately the same cost for only 44 bags.
Check reviews: In today’s Internet-driven world, you can get great insight into appliances thanks to other consumers just like you. A simple online search can let you know others’ experiences with various sealers.
Countertop sealers are meant for one-time uses. While you can reuse the bags, you must keep cutting the bags open, which makes them smaller and smaller every time. Plus, if your sealer isn’t stored on the counter, it can be a pain to drag it out each time you want to use it.
Handheld sealers
Handheld sealers on the other hand, are ideal for foods you want to keep airtight and fresh but still use regularly such as deli foods, cheese, cut-up veggies and more. They use special zipper bags so you can keep opening and closing them repeatedly. Eventually the bags will need to be replaced, but they do last quite a while. In addition, handheld sealers are much less expensive. What should you look for when buying a hand-held sealer?
Power source: Will you be replacing batteries every week or is it rechargeable?
Bags: Where do you buy them and what do they cost? Even though the bags are reusable, they eventually need to be replaced. If you can’t find replacement bags, your fun new gadget will eventually be useless.
Check reviews: Look for info about whether the bags are hard to seal or lose their seal. The food won’t stay fresh without a good, long-lasting seal.
Quick tip: These sealers often work best when the bag to be sealed is placed on a dish rag or place mat vs. a hard counter.
Common brands
Food Saver was among the first brand-name food sealers. The company has been around for years, has great ratings and a variety of styles and types of sealers. In addition, sealers can be purchased via the company’s own website, Amazon, QVC, Bed Bath & Beyond, Kohl’s, and more. Other brands include Rival, Seal-a-Meal and Weston.
Vacuum Sealer Bestsellers at Amazon
Handheld food savers are made by Food Saver, Ziploc and Reynolds, just to name a few. Many of these are sold individually or as a starter kit with a few bags. Be sure to check the details so you know what you’re getting before buying.
Editor’s meal planning tip
The best cooking tactic I ever learned was freezer cooking — cooking in advance, then freezing the extra portions so you can bring them out to cook quickly (or heat up) when you need them. Having a healthy meal ready to go in the freezer is the best way to avoid the takeout blues (and the cost of not planning).
I thought I was a master of freezer cooking until I met Erin Chase, who runs My FreezEasy. Erin takes freezer cooking and meal planning to a whole new level, and as the mother of four boys, she knows the challenges of pleasing a hungry family.
Erin has developed a system in which she can prepare 10 delicious meals and load them into the freezer in less than an hour. That’s TWO WEEKS’ worth of weeknight meals!!
And her system makes it all so easy. Every month, you get eight new freezer meal plans (you can tailor them to your taste), plus recipes, shopping lists and step-by-step instructions, including videos. Her system works whether you’re an experienced cook or you’re just starting out.
Don’t worry if your family is picky or has special dietary needs: You have a choice of a traditional plan, gluten-free, slow cooker, clean eats, 20 meals, all chicken, all ground beef or all pork chops — with gluten-free and dairy-free modifications for all recipes. Or, you can create your own customized plan using her recipe collection.
Here’s what one happy customer said about MyFreezEasy:
“So, I finally got round to giving this meal plan a try and I freaking loved it! I love that I have prepared meals sitting in the freezer that I can pull out (or — shock…horror, my hubby can!) and we will have good food cooking so easily. I really loved this concept and now I can let go of the “what’s for dinner” stumper every night!”
If you’re been wanting to try freezer cooking but aren’t sure where to start, this is a great way to learn. MyFreezEasy program start at just $8 per month when you sign up for a year. You will more than earn back the cost in the money you’ll save because you won’t waste food or turn to takeout. And that doesn’t even account for the time you’ll save once you’re not wracking your brain about what to make for dinner.
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Great article and very informative with a lot of great advice and tips
Thanks for the tip about cheese! We use our food saver to freeze all kinds of things, but had not thought to use it for cheese. One of our favorite uses is for bulk ground beef, usually purchased when it is marked down because it expires the next day. We cook it crumbled with onion, garlic, salt and pepper. drain the fat and rinse it in hot water if the meat is fatty, then cool it and package it for the freezer in meal size portions with the food saver. Quick to use for tacos, chili, spaghetti, sloppy joes, etc.
Glad you liked the cheese tip. And, thanks for the cooked beef tip!! I do it with ground, and have meant to try cooking and freezing, but haven’t gotten around to it. Great reminder and “how to” explanation. Can’t wait to try.
I use my Foodsaver sealer often. A trick I picked up for leftovers like lasagna- once the food has cooled down, I’ll take a portion, wrap it in plastic wrap so it’s completely wrapped and doesn’t leak, then seal it like that.
This way, it allows the portion to hold its shape and not get squished and flattened as the air gets sucked out of the bag. I do that for anything that’s squishy, like ricotta cheese.
My wife and I both love to fish and we ended up with about 40 lbs of sushi grade yellow fin tuna after a fishing trip to the Gulf of Mexico off of Venice LA. She bought a vacuum sealer just to preserve what is well over a years worth of very valuable and tasty tuna and we’ve used it for most of our fresh water catches as well. Even six months later the tuna tastes as fresh as it did when it was just caught, in fact a packet is thawing in the kitchen for supper tonight, yum! While recreational fishing isn’t exactly a frugal source of food the sealer does at least defray some of the cost by preventing any of the fish from spoiling before we can eat it. I’m very impressed with how long it lasts when stored this way and how good it tastes. I have to guess if it preserves taste so well it is probably also preserving nuitritional value too. Great post!
We use it all the time. My husband fishes and sometimes catches far too much to eat that night. You can use the food saver and take it out many months later and it still tastes like it was just caught.
I use the foodsaver countertop sealer that works with the zippered bags. It’s The FoodSaver® FM1510 Fresh Food Preservation System. I found it to be the most cost-effective solution because like you mentioned in your post, the bags are reusable. I bought it at Kohl’s and using my Kohls cash and Discover card $10 off $30, plus 30% off. I got a great deal. I suggest buying the bags from foodsaver because when they have a sale, they really are the best price.
The reason I recommend the countertop model is because it gets much better suction than the handheld model. Additionally, the handheld needs to be charged before you use it and it will not work when plugged in. If you’re sealing a big batch of food you can run out of power. (I speak from experience)
I’ve been making 2 weeks to 1 month worth of meals for about 1.5 years now and this system works wonders.
I also suggest getting some very cheap sandwich bags and using them like liners. They will make cleaning and reusing your zipper bags much easier.
If you use a Discover card, make sure you check the discover deals for that $10 of $30. It comes around every month or two.
Couldn’t live (eat…) without my hand-held vacuum sealer. I went with hand-held because of the bulkiness of the countertop ones. And maybe not quite as good as the countertop versions, the hand-held suits my purposes just fine.
Like Sway above, I also use plastic bags or plastic wrap to line the vacuum bags on appropriate items which saves a ton of money as the bags are really pricy.
I not only freeze tons of fruits and vegetables when they are in season and cheap, but I also make big batches of meals and freeze them in individual portions for easy weeknight meals. I vacuum / freeze the items separately then bag together the things that go together to make a whole meal — i.e. chile relleno casserole and Spanish rice. Pull out the bag the night before to defrost, heat, add a salad and voila! dinner is served.
I love your freezer cooking strategy. I do that with Pyrex dishes, but they take up a lot more space.
I would like to see some real life numbers. For example your price for the sealer, price per bag, how many bags frozen per month, cost per month, length of time frozen. Maybe a blind test to pick which food has been vacuum sealed and zip top sealed.