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Mr. Fish Commercial Vacuum Sealer - Double Chamber - Food Packaging

www.mrfishinternational.com Mr. Fish International Commercial Vacuum Sealer Machine Model #500. This double chamber was designed for vacuum ...

Preserving Your Harvest Part I: Freezing & Vacuum Sealers ...

by Mark Delman

The key is to blanche the vegetables first to stop enzymatic bustle within the vegetable which would cause deterioration.  Blanching is a cooking process where you first drop the vegetables in boiling water for a short period of time (generally 1-3 minute) and then transfer them to a bowl of ice cold water to stop the cooking process.  You leave them in the ice water bath for the same amount of time that they are in the boiling water.  The boiling and cooling time depends on the type and size of the vegetable.   You can find blanching times for common vegetables at the National Center for Home Food Preservation. Chamber Vacuum Sealers : The greatest machines are commercial grade chamber vacuum sealers.  These devices work by placing the bag into an internal chamber.  They create the strongest vacuum and have the capacity to seal liquid items like soup.  Because they are designed to seal liquids, they are also advance at sealing items like meat and fish which can give off alot of juice (blood) which can get sucked into the pump of other styles of vacuum sealers and foul them. Unfortunately, these chamber style machines are also very expensive.  The smallest and cheapest of these devices is about $1700.  I looked in vain for months on eBay hoping to find a used model and finally gave up.  If you are a hunter or fisherman freezing lots of meat each year, you may want to gnaw the bullet and buy one of these chamber vacuum sealers.  Personally, this was way to expensive for me so I decided to buy a suction vacuum sealer. The most common of these is FoodSaver brand.  My internet research on this brand showed that consumers had mixed feelings about these machines.  The older (and simpler) machines seemed to be favorably reviewed, but the newer models which automatically stop the vacuum and seal the bag, crop to be more spotty; I found lots of complaints that these machines only lasted a year or less before breaking. In the end, I decided to purchase a brand called the VacUpack which cost $279.  What sold me on this particular model was that it a totally manual (less stuff to break) and it has a drain built in so that if you accidentally such fluids into the machine, the fluids will be drained onto the counter rather than being sucked into the pump.   The VacUpack comes with bag materials on rolls and also bags of predetermined size that are sealed on one end.  The roll material offers the benefit of allowing you to create bags of whatever size you want and the material is cheaper to purchase.  However, I did not find the quality of the rolls to be particularly good.  They just didn't seal as well as the pre-formed pouches. 

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