The Food Saver

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The Food Saver

by Capt. Terry Rand



Every spring, my wife and I sort through the freezer for our annual “freezer cleaning” ritual. This usually involves my wife pulling out zip lock freezer bags and asking me to try to identify the contents. Most of these packages are so full of ice crystals that making more than an educated guess at what the bag holds is a near impossibility. If it can’t be identified it makes its way into the household garbage. If it is freezer burnt it finds a new home in that same container. After a couple of years of going through this ritual and tossing away what I knew to once be succulent blackfish and fluke fillets, now inedible due to excessive freezer burning.

The reason for freezer burn is that water evaporates, even in freezing temperatures. Ever notice that a tray of ice cubes that has gone untouched for a period of time actually start to shrink? In a zip lock bag, moisture from your food will evaporate in the freezer and as soon as the moisture rises to the surface of the food, it freezes, creating ice crystals and ruining your food. I knew I had to find a better method for freezing my prize fillets.

Enter the Food Saver!

The Food Saver is, quite simply, a vacuum sealer. It allows you to store foods in your freezer for extended periods of time without becoming freezer burnt by eliminating all of the air from the storage container. This, in turn, keeps your food fresh and retards the process of moisture evaporation. Instead of a freezer shelf life of a couple of months, you can be eating fresh tasting fluke fillets in February, six months after you originally stored them in your freezer! Just this past week I defrosted and prepared a meal of winter flounder fillets that I had caught in April! And, they tasted just like they did last spring!

The Food Saver uses proprietary plastic baggies specially designed for vacuum sealing. These baggies can be purchased as a box of individual bags or can be bought in a roll that allows you to cut the bags to your preferred size allowing you to store single serving size portions or packages large enough to feed the whole family. And, the baggies also have a label so you can indicate exactly what you’re storing and when you packaged it.

Food Saver is also an asset in prolonging the shelf life of other foods that are not stored in the freezer. Food Saver manufactures various food storage containers for extending the shelf life of nearly any food. When I first purchased my Food Saver, my wife anticipated not having any use for it herself. Until, she saw me vacuum sealing chicken breasts that were bought in a large, bulk package. Now, much of our monthly shopping involves bulk packages and using the Food Saver to separate and store our food.

The Food Saver Sport model is the perfect vacuum sealing appliance for an average household kitchen. It comes with enough baggies to get you started, the accessory hose for making use of the Food Saver storage containers and an instructional video that teaches you everything you need to know to become proficient with using your Food Saver. All for the low price of $119.99.

Stop throwing away food! Save it……with Food Saver!!!

 

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