berniestafford wrote:But this only includes 3 bags??? Where do you get more and how much are they??

Wally world (Two 20 foot rolls - $17.77)

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Deni-Magic-Vac-Vacuum-Sealing-Bags-Set-of-2-Rolls/9222972

Not surprised California has purchased the most, people need to keep their medical basil fresh.

I'm not sure that I'd recommend cooking and eating from the plastic bags. We know that plasticizers leach from many plastics into food/liquids - faster with heating. We don't know the longterm effect of the chemicals, although Nalgene and other brands recalled their #5 and #7 plastic bottles.

I like this idea as a great way to store dehydrated foods prior to a hike. I'll be in for one and letting other hiker trash know about this sale.

mjbleck wrote:These types of vac-sealers don’t work well with wet ingredients. You can’t bag soups, sauces, wet marinated meats, or other liquid items very well with them. The technology for that costs more that $24.99.

True, but it's easy enough to work all the air out of a zip-lock bag that's full of liquid by sealing almost all the way and squeezing until the air is gone.

I make chicken stock a few times a year and bag it a cup or two at a time in quart bags.

sdc100 wrote:I suspect that Rival doesn't make most of the items they market because I've seen identical models under other names. Amazon is a great place to discover such things because identical models by other companies would often pop up in the Also Recommended section. Most are cheaply made in China.

Chances are "Rival" is another dead brand name, bought by another company. Just like GE, RCA, Magnavox, Argus and other names from the time when Americans actually produced something.

chiieddy wrote:There's a Lifehacker article about turning a crock pot into a sous vide immersion. My husband is itching to try it and my crock pot is old enough that I want a new one that has a digital timer.

I have only anecdotal evidence, but I believe modern Crock Pots cook at a higher temperature than the old ones.

I read through all 4 pages just to make sure no one already asked. Does this model have an accessory port for the jar sealer?

There's an attatchment that you can use to seal mason jars with dry goods such as chocolate, and soup mixes and it keeps them fresh for a few years. The description doesn't say it comes with a hose for the woot, but the one at www.sealameal.com comes with an accessory hose.

Anyone know about the accessory port?

kevin038 wrote:Does anyone know what is the largest size bag you can seal?

The unit is only 15" wide, so less than 15" in width, and as loooooooooong as you like!

I have another brand of this item and really use it often. I make large crock pots of sauces and future dinners. The best way to use a sealer on liquids is to put the liquid in a plastic container and freeze until firm. Then I remove it from the bowl, put it in the bag and seal up. Refreeze in the bag, last for months without freezer burn. Works great and I have meals ready to be thawed and heated up. I do remove the food items from the bag prior to heating or microwaving.

My dog is always trying to get into my basil. Can dogs sniff through something sealed with this?

n 4 1

You cannot have any liquid where the plastic is going to be sealed together.
When packaging meats, I always drain the pieces of meat, put them in the bag, and wipe down the interior/exterior parts of the bag.

If it won't seal because it is sucking moisture before it seals, throw a paper towel on top of the meat. It is easy to remove when unfreezing because the paper towel disintegrates while the meat remains frozen!

Its available at Wal-Mart for $54.98 online.

Reviews are really good.

http://reviews.walmart.com/1336/10660639/seal-a-meal-vac-sealer-food-saver-vs106-reviews/reviews.htm

I'm pulling the trigger. The fiancé unit will be thrilled.

EDIT: Dangit, wrong model. They do look really similar.

javajnkie wrote:In general, that's my feeling about Rival too. But in my past life as a scientist, we had an old Seal-a-Meal in the lab that saw more use than it would have in the average kitchen. It took a beating, but never quit.


P.S. We weren't just rogue scientists, by the way. This product is specifically mentioned in various protocols. If you're curious, check out The condensed protocols from Molecular cloning : a laboratory manual.
(Just doing my part to spread science awareness. Sagan would be proud.)

We use one in my lab ... not this brand though. (Sometimes we too seal monkeys.)

woodszilla wrote:Just a heads up for anyone planning to use this for sous vide... This type of vacuum sealer will suck the liquid out of the bag (marinade etc.) along with the air.

We just put a paper towel along the edge that is to be sealed, sucks up any wet stuff before it gets to the vacuum area.

Just vac packed 50 lbs of venison roasts the other day, gonna do 20lbs of hamburger tonight!

tubasparky wrote:I read through all 4 pages just to make sure no one already asked. Does this model have an accessory port for the jar sealer?

There's an attatchment that you can use to seal mason jars with dry goods such as chocolate, and soup mixes and it keeps them fresh for a few years. The description doesn't say it comes with a hose for the woot, but the one at www.sealameal.com comes with an accessory hose.

Anyone know about the accessory port?

I would guess that if the accessory port was there, they would mention it. Therefore, I would assume it doesn't have it. The Foodsaver at the special price of $80 with free shipping is a great deal. It does have the accessory port with the hose to seal mason jars, etc. It also stores and cuts the bags. It comes with 5 additional items, which I figure are about $50 worth. So, $80 minus $50 for the additional items, leaves about $30 for the vacuum sealer, and the Foodsaver one is a much more advanced model, so I would deem it a superior deal.(but only if you can find it for $80 and free shipping, which they offered before Christmas). Also, check an earlier post which noted a coupon code on the BradsDeals website.

sandbar67 wrote:I use one of these to vacuum-seal my Sour Diesel Kush so the fuzz can't smell it when they pull me over. A+++ would buy again

I know nothing on this topic, but I have heard that "Sour Diesel Kush" would get smashed in a vacuum sealed bag, so the best way to use one of these is to use the airtight seal without sucking all of the air out. Just saying...

The bags and rolls are available at Costco under the Foodsaver brand. The box has (4) 11" x 16 ft. rolls (1) 8" x 20 ft. roll, and (30) 8" x 11" quart bags (precut). The box sells for $39.99 (if I recall correctly).

On the Foodsaver website, an individual roll sells for around $12.00, plus S/H (unless they are having a special for free S/H)

With the long rolls, you can make any size "bag" that you want. If you have a 2 ft. long salmon, you use the 11" roll, and cut it to be 2.5 ft. long. It will vacuum seal your fish perfectly!

I'm in for one - I have been wanting one of these for a REALLY long time.

This website seems to have good prices on vacuum bags, I have not used them myself, but have seen some good reviews:

http://www.webstaurantstore.com/third779/products/vacuum-packaging-machines-and-vacuum-packaging-bags.html

if it cannot do liquids and paper towel intervention is necessary, then why does it have the little liquid tray?

craigthom wrote:I have only anecdotal evidence, but I believe modern Crock Pots cook at a higher temperature than the old ones.

My "old" one is 15 years old or so. Maybe a little younger. It's a Rival (coincidentally) and has a basic switch that you can swap for low, high and off. That's it. It's a nice oval shape. I do love it but the timer capabilities are a distinct draw on the newer ones.

Is that a vacuum packed FROG????

While I have no personal experience with this or and other "cheapie" sealer, the (public television) show "America's Test Kitchen" tested dozens of these - and passed on every single unit that was under $300. The "best" cheap unit they'd consider was $150

Not only that, they talked about what a bad idea it is to try and re-use the bags.

And I agree with the quality post that calls Rival products cheap junk. When Rival moved to China it became an entirely different company. El Passo for me.

sdc100 wrote:They would absolutely work. I've even used cheap bags from my local $1 store for short term storage and they generally don't leak. Cheap sandwich bags (75 for $1) are great for storing individual chicken cutlets.

As long as the plastic melts from the heat generated by the strip, it'll seal. In that sense, more expensive thicker bags may actually be worse since they may not melt enough to make a good seal.

BTW, I also use mine to reseal plastic snack bags, i.e. potato chips. Sucking out the air helps preserve the crunch. Just be sure not to suck in any crumbs.

I use the cheaper snack bags from the $1 store too. As you mentioned, they work great for short term storage. Just stick a straw in the corner of the baggie, seal it to the straw, suck all the air down, quickly remove the straw and finish sealing the bag, then voila! You have a homemade vacuum sealed bag. If you want to store your food for longer than a week or so I would suggest getting an actual freezer bag to avoid freezer burn on your food. Depending on what you store with the 'fancy' freezer bag, you could always just wash and reuse to keep from having to purchase more. I am considering the rival. You can't beat it for the price, even if it's not amazing.

Itaintrite wrote:Can I use my ziploc bags with this? Got a bunch from Amazon. And a few cents each, they're probably much cheaper than buying the rolls.

You can use any freezer bag if you turn it inside out first. Much cheaper, I do it all the time.

I was on the fence but then I used the "CHANGEYOURPASSWORD" coupon code which covered the $5 shipping and jumped in for the deal.

Thank you woot for having coupons. I love you guys. Just got yourself a sale.

WOW.... I just bought a vacuum sealer machine from sears which was ALOT more money , but it was a bigger sealer---it also came with a roll of 100 11" bags...

wish this would have been posted before X-Mas.

Wish the sealer could seal other bags also like chip bags, cereal, etc... that would help out alot...
Dont know much about Rival products !

Maybe I'm being oversensitive and maybe it's just a 'coincidence' but I do believe the vacuum sealed monkey is in VERY bad taste due to this recent news story:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1341364/Vacuum-kitten-killer-hunted-making-snuff-movie-suffocation.html

I'm sure many have heard of this story.. disgusting. :/

These are really crap. If you want to cook , a lot, and use it a lot and wear it out and be done then it's worth $25 I suppose for the educational factor. Air per se does not hurt food but moisture does and so removing air helps remove moisture. If you're hot to improve your food do this: 1. Fill a container fully with food and then you're done. Any air can be squeezed out by pushing the plastic up against the food in a bag. If you use a container simply fill it fully and you've accomplished the same thing. A tip for quality food taste. 1. Cook food when fresh and freeze it after cooking. Most chicken cooked on a bbq tastes 2x better, to me, than frozen chicken later bbq'd. Consider that all frozen foods are cooked and you basically heat up a cooked meal when you 'cook' them. They're tasting better now than ever and the flavor quality improves as methods of keeping texture quality improves. If you want texture quality consider separating foods that can 'go bad' these would be tomatoes or delicate items. Add them later to your meal when you can get them fresh. The best help is check frozen pizza to see what works frozen. Normally onions don't work well so add them later. Meats are ok as are sauces and starch. to make a vegetalb, like oinion or green pepper work better when you cook to freeze is to par boil them. That semi cooks them, changes the cell structure and allows them to freeze without breaking the cell wall. Later the heat from reheating finishes the 'cooking'. Most veggies taste better with less cooking. Or add them, fresh, later when you're heating up the dish.

We had a Rival Seal-A-Meal for several years. It just crapped out a few months ago and we've been looking to replace it. It definitely wasn't top of the line, but we weren't slaughtering large game or needing to vacuum seal anything on a grand scale so it was fine for occasional things. Our biggest beef with the Seal-A-Meal was how hard you had to squeeze the sides together to get the sealer to 'lock' together. It's also really messy if you're sealing anything with any kind of liquid...no matter how hard you try to get it all out, it sucked it out while clogging the vacuum sucker thingy and going all over the counter. Oh, and you can't really clean the vacuum sucker thingy. So sanitary with meat.

I was gonna grab one of these, BUT I noticed 2 things. It never says it's a Seal-A-Meal. I searched the product number and can't find it anywhere. I think this is a Rival product they marketed in Europe. I also don't think it will do what was SUPER handy about the Seal-A-Meal which is just re-seal a bag with no vacuuming. This was great to keep brown sugar from getting hard, keeping crackers/bread/chips fresher longer, etc. I'd just put the original bag in, hit a 'seal only' button and voila. I don't think this one will seal without vacuuming first. I'll hold out for a different model.

Oh that poor, poor monkey.

connel wrote:WOW.... I just bought a vacuum sealer machine from sears which was ALOT more money , but it was a bigger sealer---it also came with a roll of 100 11" bags...

wish this would have been posted before X-Mas.

Wish the sealer could seal other bags also like chip bags, cereal, etc... that would help out alot...
Dont know much about Rival products !

Mine also comes with the cutter for the bags and hose for mason jars , two different speeds etc. so it was worth the price plus it is a very well known brand... good luck to whoever purchases this ...

Did they seal in poop in that picture?
Seriously what is that?

I have had two Food Saver sealers and loved both of them. Vacuum sealing definitely extends storage time of the food and keeps it fresh.

$24.95 is a great price too!

[quote postid="4300573" user="mjbleck"]
These types of vac-sealers don’t work well with wet ingredients. You can’t bag soups, sauces, wet marinated meats, or other liquid items very well with them. The technology for that costs more that $24.99.

quote]

Actually, freezing liquids is easy too. I just freeze them in a plastic container and then pop them out when they are frozen, pop them into a bag and vac seal away!!! Works Great!

If any of you live around the midwest, Menards sells generic bags. They go on sale frequently. They work well and are heavier than other bags I've tried. No issues with sealing them. If you are looking, they are located in the plumbing section by the other types of bags near the cleaning supplies. At least they are where I live.

What they'll never tell you is that you can use normal food storage bags (like Glad or Hefty) just fine. Simply insert the top of the bag into the machine, vacuum and seal. It will trim off any excess.

superdude4agze wrote:Hello sous vide!

Anyone know what vacuum bags are necessary for this and how much they usually cost?

I've notified PETA about this monkey abuse

Been wanting one of these for a while. @ $25, even if it breaks or sucks, it's not a lot of $$...

And I used a coupon for $5 off so free shipping...

animeboy wrote:Been wanting one of these for a while. @ $25, even if it breaks or sucks, it's not a lot of $$...

And I used a coupon for $5 off so free shipping...

Can you share the coupon code? How did you get it? Thanks!