Vacuum Food Saver

It’s quite common to find a vacuum food saver in kitchens all across the country now.  These devices are a compromise between short-term storage of food in plastic containers or zip-lock bags and long term storage by pressure canning.  Preserving foods by pressure canning is a skill that many modern people never learn, although it’s still quite common in rural areas.  In pressure canning, food is placed into glass jars sterilized by heat, typically in boiling water.  The jars are drained of boiling water, filled with the food to be preserved and then placed again in boiling water, nearly but not quite immersed.  A lid with a rubber seal (also sterilized in boiling water) is placed on the jar and a retaining ring is loosely screwed on to the jar.  As the pan of boiling water, and the jar, cool, the air inside the jar contracts.  This draws the lid down upon the jar tightly, creating a vacuum seal.  Since everything is sterile and now under vacuum and air-tight, harmful bacteria cannot get into the jar and the food is preserved.
It sounds like a long, detailed process because it is.  Care must be taken at every step, or else the food will spoil.  Many people have given up this practice and have no desire to learn it.  They simply buy food from the grocery store when they need it, getting wintertime produce that has been recently harvested in warmer climates.  However, there is still a desire to make this food last as long as possible in the modern refrigerator.  No one wants to throw out food we have paid for because it has gone bad before we could eat it all.  And there are many times we want to purchase food in large quantities because it is less expensive that way, or because it is on sale, even though it is more than we can consume before it would spoil.
That’s where vacuum food sealers come in.  Where the canning process uses high temperatures to create a vacuum, a vacuum sealer does the same thing (almost) mechanically, by attaching a small vacuum pump to a container and withdrawing air through a tube.  The container is then sealed, the pump removed, and we have a sealed container of food with very little air inside.  This drastically improves the useful life of fruits and vegetables in the refrigerator.  It also removes moisture and allows foods to be frozen without freezer burn.
Many vacuum food savers withdraw the air from a plastic bag containing food.  They function in the same manner as a food saver with a container, except that they use plastic bags or various sizes.  With a plastic bag you can visibly see that the air has been withdrawn, because the bag contracts and conforms to the shape of the food as the air is evacuated.  In most cases the food saver vacuum sealer is a large countertop device, but they have been decreasing in size over the past few years.  One device, the Glad Handy-sealer,  is even a hand-held model with a suction cup that attaches to a special zip-lock bag.

It’s quite common to find a vacuum food saver in kitchens all across the country now.  These devices are a compromise between short-term storage of food in plastic containers or zip-lock bags and long term storage by pressure canning.  Preserving foods by pressure canning is a skill that many modern people never learn, although it’s still quite common in rural areas.  In pressure canning, food is placed into glass jars sterilized by heat, typically in boiling water.  The jars are drained of boiling water, filled with the food to be preserved and then placed again in boiling water, nearly but not quite immersed.  A lid with a rubber seal (also sterilized in boiling water) is placed on the jar and a retaining ring is loosely screwed on to the jar.  As the pan of boiling water, and the jar, cool, the air inside the jar contracts.  This draws the lid down upon the jar tightly, creating a vacuum seal.  Since everything is sterile and now under vacuum and air-tight, harmful bacteria cannot get into the jar and the food is preserved.

It sounds like a long, detailed process because it is.  Care must be taken at every step, or else the food will spoil.  Many people have given up this practice and have no desire to learn it.  They simply buy food from the grocery store when they need it, getting wintertime produce that has been recently harvested in warmer climates.  However, there is still a desire to make this food last as long as possible in the modern refrigerator.  No one wants to throw out food we have paid for because it has gone bad before we could eat it all.  And there are many times we want to purchase food in large quantities because it is less expensive that way, or because it is on sale, even though it is more than we can consume before it would spoil.

That’s where vacuum food sealers come in.  Where the canning process uses high temperatures to create a vacuum, a vacuum sealer does the same thing (almost) mechanically, by attaching a small vacuum pump to a container and withdrawing air through a tube.  The container is then sealed, the pump removed, and we have a sealed container of food with very little air inside.  This drastically improves the useful life of fruits and vegetables in the refrigerator.  It also removes moisture and allows foods to be frozen without freezer burn.

Many vacuum food savers withdraw the air from a plastic bag containing food.  They function in the same manner as a food saver with a container, except that they use plastic bags or various sizes.  With a plastic bag you can visibly see that the air has been withdrawn, because the bag contracts and conforms to the shape of the food as the air is evacuated.  In most cases the food saver vacuum sealer is a large countertop device, but they have been decreasing in size over the past few years.  One device, the Glad Handy-sealer,  is even a hand-held model with a suction cup that attaches to a special zip-lock bag.

Tagged as: , , , , ,

Comments on this entry are closed.