I have heard about FoodSaver® Systems for years – as seen on TV and from friends who use them. I have always wanted to try one, but I was a little intimidated. I’m not a big freeze-the-casserole kind of girl, but it turns out there are 1,001 other ways to use these vacuum-sealing machines.
In conjunction with POPSUGAR Select, The FoodSaver® Brand offered to send me the FoodSaver® V4865 2-In-1 Vacuum Sealing System in exchange for a review and a post showcasing examples of how we used it in our house. Matt and I gave it a fair test drive, vacuum sealing everything from salmon to hops.
The system uses a roll that you cut to the size you need and seal one end of to create a bag. (It also came with a selection of pre-assembled bags and some special zip locking bags that I’ll show you in a second.)
The instructions were printed right inside – very easy to follow for a newbie like me!
Just cut your roll to size using the cutter –
Seal one edge, which takes about 20 seconds
Then find a food in your house that is poorly wrapped in the fridge. This was easy to do in ours – I found some smoked salmon that I had “sealed” with a clip. Yeah, air was not being kept out by that clip! Air is the number one enemy of freshness!
Place the food in your bag, and insert the open edge into the machine to vacuum and seal. Nice and neat!!
The second food I sealed – leftover buttercream frosting! This was a great food to seal and stash in our freezer for another party. Please disregard the *clean* spoon digs to the bowl ; )
One of my initial critiques was actually nullified upon exploring the system further: you can’t open and re-seal the above packages without cutting them. Thus, the roll is best for things you’re going to freeze for a while. But for foods in your fridge that you need to access, there are special bags that zip closed and have a valve to vacuum out the air. (There is also a whole line of special containers that can be vacuumed out too!)
Open cheese needs a new package –
Insert it into the special bags, and use the attachment to vacuum –
And ta-da – your cheese is zipped and sealed air-free. I imagine that these are a bit more expensive than a regular zipper bag, but upon visiting the website they appear to have lots of sales that might make them competitive with store brands. There are too many variables to do a true cost comparison on that. Washable containers might be best for things that you don’t need to keep longer because you can reuse them over and over and not have to throw them away, but you could save the FoodSaver® Bags for special things you know would really benefit from longer preserving (like cheese!)
The machine has both a dry and moist setting – I made the mistake of trying to vacuum some leftover mini cupcakes from Mazen’s birthday on the moist setting. It was like a science experiment on the volume of air!! Luckily they still tasted good : )
My biggest hesitation with the FoodSaver® is storage. It’s too big to sit on my countertop (I am extremely protective of countertop real estate!) but it’s one of those things that if it’s out of sight it might be out of mind. I think we will use this most of all for special projects – freezing things in bulk (like the pesto we make every year from fresh summer basil) or if we buy a bunch of meats and fish at the market and want to keep them fresh throughout the winter.
But perhaps the coolest special project we did was using the FoodSaver® to vacuum-pack Matt’s hops! This is the harvest from our first year planting hops at home, laid out to dry for a week on a clean screen:
When used in beer brewing, their shape doesn’t matter, so we were able to compress them a TON by vacuuming out the air. The hops went into three different bags of three different weights (for different styles of beer!)
Look how much air was pulled out!
And all this –
Turned into this –
Such a perfect solution for Matt, who had planned to stuff them into bags and call it a day.
Disclosure: This post was sponsored by the FoodSaver® Brand through their partnership with POPSUGAR Select. While I was compensated to write a post about the FoodSaver®
Jessica says
You can also wash and reuse the zipper bags. That’s what I do with all zipper bags. Certainly, you shouldn’t do this if you’ve had raw meat in the bags, but ones that have held cheeses and other ready-to-eat foods will be fine. I even label mine with the type of food I put in each so any flavors that may be transferred even after washing aren’t noticeable. It’s a money-saver, for sure, but more importantly, it puts less plastic into the waste stream.
KathEats says
Great idea!
Erin Shmidt says
What a great Christmas gift idea! Vivian on PBS’s “Chef’s Life” used this to prep all of her ingredients before her big dinner. It looked awesome!
Lisa says
I just started following! Your kitchen is beautiful!!!
Do you post mostly ads now or original RD focused posts too?? I was brought here by a link to a several years old post.
Any way of navigating the archives by nutritional-focused posts?
KathEats says
Welcome!! My blog is a mix of lifestyle, round ups of my meals, recipes and some nutrition posts. You can find all of my former nutrition posts here!
Erin @ Her Heartland Soul says
This would be so useful for so many things!
Cindy says
Hi. Love your blog. Quick question: what brand is your food scale?
Kate @ Kate Lives Healthy says
I used have meat ‘juices’ everywhere when sealing but then read that if you freeze the meat you are freezing for a hour or so it will reduce the liquid when sealing. It has made a huge difference. I really notice a huge difference in the quality chicken, fish, beef that I thaw from the Foodsaver bags compared to the regular non vacuum bags. No more freezer burn and it tastes much better I find even months later. Totally worthwhile kitchen tool!
Linda @ The fitty says
As nice as it looks, I think it’s pretty hefty on a kitchen counter.
Lori says
Cindy,
I wanted to know the brand of her scale as well, and I believe I’ve found it on Amazon. It looks to be Bakers Math Kitchen Scale.
smac0004 says
Hi Kath… It’s been awhile since I’ve made time to visit your site… I used to check in on the daily to see what was on your plate and what you were getting up to… You and Pioneer Woman were my very first fan-blog loves.
My visits slowed down once you stopped daily blogging, but I really wanted to share why… what’s keeping me away is the ever-increasing glut of sponsored posts on your blog. I understand this is your job and you have to make a living, but I’m sorry, it feels very inauthentic to see SO MANY pay-to-play posts. I’m offering feedback kindly only as a disenchanted former community member, not to be snarky or judgmental. I wish you and your family well, I’m sure I’ll pop in here and there, but it feels like the change is so overwhelming that I’ve lost a true friend… 🙁
Sandi says
All these years I thought you were joking about having buttercream in your freezer! So funny!!
What do you use the buttercream for?
KathEats says
Well I don’t normally have it – it’s just leftover from some we made for Mazen’s birthday
Amanda says
I had one for years. It was for buying large amounts of meat that needing long term storing. However, it was absolutely out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Counter top real estate is coveted here. I actually like to have as little as possible ON my counters, so I had it stored up. Which meant that the small jobs I might have used the foodsaver for were completed with other things like saran wrap or plastic/glass containers.
I do love it for resealing large amounts of meat though, into more manageable portions. I could see having it for a well-producing garden as well.
andrea @ wagnotwoof says
Yeah, this seems like something that I would get really excited about for a few weeks and then hardly ever use. It would be useful for freezing things though…i can picture individually wrapped veggie patties, but then that seems kind of wasteful. Still cool that you got to try it out though!
Katie says
I don’t understand this: “I’m not a big freeze-the-casserole kind of girl…” In the three years I’ve read your blog, I’ve seen you pull thousands of things out of the freezer, from meat to birthday cake to cupcakes to sauce to cookies to more cake. But casseroles are where you draw the line? Confused.
KathEats says
I use my freezer all the time, but I don’t do a lot of make-ahead meals like casseroled.
Robyn says
I’ll tell you what kind of girl this is good for…the working from 7am-4pm plus outside the home kind of girl. This could be awesome for the weekend food prep that needs to happen when you are out the door to daycare before 7 and then at work by 7:30 and home by 5. Rather than just being a nice-to-have, this could be a sanity helper. Thanks for sharing.
Amanda says
This would be so helpful for sealing individual portions of chicken!
Courtney says
I’ve had a Foodsaver system for quite a few years now, and I can tell you it has saved me SO much money . I freeze homemade pasta sauces, tons of meat ( I buy the family pack of chicken, and individually freeze portions in the food saver), and vacuum seal all my cheeses. I even have the attachment that grates my cheese right into the Foodsaver container. My favorite use of all time though, is for watermelon. In the summer, I cut up a HUGE watermelon, put it in the vacuum seal container, and suck that air out of it. Every morning, I take some watermelon out to bring to work with me. It tastes just as fresh on Friday, as it did on Monday! I can’t stand eating pre cut up watermelon a few days later, because all of the water has left the fruit. With the Foodsaver, the water stays inside the fruit until I open up the container to eat it. It’s so amazing, and even worth the coveted counter top space..which for me is saying a lot!
Heidi Kokborg says
This is such a perfect invention! I could really use one of these!
Dana says
IS there a recipe for that Buttercream?! Looks great, and finding a good recipe is hard to find 🙂
KathEats says
I’ll have to ask Matt! It was delish.
Matt says
I actually can’t remember, but it was a very standard and simple recipe. I remember looking at Ina Garten’s and Martha Stewart amongst several other blogs. They’re all pretty similar. I do remember something like 5 x 2min of mixing. So you’d add the butter, mix 2min. Add 1/4 of sugar, mix 2min. Add more, 2min, etc. Dash of vanilla at the end and you’re good to go!
Nicole says
For those worried about counter space, there is another option…FoodSaver also has a hand held version! http://www.foodsaver.com/vacuum-sealers/handheld-vacuum-sealers/. I bought this for myself a few year’s back (in white…now that I see it, I want the red one lol) and it takes up very little space (we have a small kitchen!) We do have the regular size one that we use for large cuts of meats/bulk purchases like Kath suggests. But for smaller or more frequent use items, purchasing the hand held is a great solution! (And nice to hear from Matt…just a suggestion that it’d be cool to have a guest post on brewing with those sealed hops when you do!)
Alicia @ Pandora Sews says
I haven’t commented in forever, but I wanted to say that I have an older food saver vacuum and I love it! One of my favorite uses is for making quick use of marinating meat. There is a container for doing that, and the flavors really get deep in to the meat in quick fashion. It’s worth looking in to.
Connie says
I cut the bags long off the roll and then re-seal several times.
Diana says
My husband is a hunter, and we process the venison ourselves. We use our food saver A TON for our meat. It would freezer burn for sure in regular zip lock bags.
food machinery says
great post, i use my vacuum sealer for all my frozen things as my freezer get full very quickly, thanks
Andy says
Thanks a lot for the detailed post. I think you have covered all kinds of foods vacuum sealing. I will be so helpful for me.
Danny says
In doing a search for “1001 uses of the food saver system” this post popped up! ???? I just recd a model yesterday from my youngest daughter. Even tho i can use a straw to suck out the air of any zip bag and i can use a automotive vacuum pump in conjunction with the FS jar sealing tops, while we do have electricity i thought “why not”… The FS system does not have to pertain to just foods either. I’m 53yo and slowly regressing to be less dependant on “others” for my food supply… I say this with all my dependence on others in its current form! Lol winkwink Vacuum sealing mason jars of dried beans, rice, oats, wheat berries, corn meal etc. While i do buy and cook meats in bulk, the freezer is not something i want to continue to be dependant on. My first water bathing of our first gardens tomatoes in 2014 that my wife had planted before we found her breast cancer, finally grabbed me and got me started on something I’ve always wanted to learn and do for this city boy. Grow my own veggies, make and preserve.
Pressure canner, grain mill and butter churn are my next fast track investments here shortly.
Nice blog btw! Be well, eat clean as possible and be safe! Merry Christmas&happy née year