Review: Food Saver

One of the gifts we got for our wedding was a Food Saver. This was an item I knew I'd love and use but the price was a little steep to justify buying myself so I was really excited that someone got it for us. For those who don't know - I love buying meat in bulk and then freezing it. This is great for saving money but over time, the meat definitely loses integrity and gets freezer burn. Now that I'm typing this out, I probably should have just bought the thing...

Anyways... so far I am loving the Food Saver!!

Once we got back from our honeymoon, I made it my mission to buy all the meat at Costco... actually, let me rewind. The closest Costco to our house is a Costco Business Center. It's still accessible by regular members but it's catered more to business owners. Things are sold in SUPER bulk but at prices (per unit) even cheaper than regular Costco. Sounded like a perfect mission for Food Saver.

So, I went to Costco to pick up some meat for burgers and ended up with a 10 lb log of ground beef. Easy solution - divide it up and freeze it! I decided to go with 2lb bags so each one had enough for several burgers and if I didn't want to use all of it, I could just take out a part and seal it again!

It worked awesome! I now have 4 bags of beef in my fridge and the rest I made into burger patties. I actually feel like removing the oxygen has made the meat better too.... The booklet said that the meat may darker but I've noticed all the meat I've sealed has looked redder and fresher (compare to the top right package which was the original log). 

I also suggest using a kitchen scale. They're really cheap and totally get a lot of surprise use (some recipes prefer grams to traditional measurements because they're more accurate) and great for knowing how much you're freezing.

The Food Saver came in handy later that day too. I also bought a top sirloin at Costco... and it turned out to be two of them! They were pretty big also so one was enough for dinner. I seasoned both, cooked one, and vacuum sealed the other. Down the road when we want steak again, I've also saved myself the trouble of seasoning it. 

Now the big question... the bag refills. The Food Saver comes with a starter pack of 4 bags and 1 roll. The rolls are cool because you just create your own bag at the size you need so you're not wasting any of the material. Since I went pretty crazy at Costco, I decided to also get a replacement package. It comes with 5 rolls (which are 20ft long) and 36 bags. It's pretty pricey at $40 but doing the math, if you use 1 ft for each package you make with the rolls (you will probably use less) then it's about $.30 a bag. Definitely not cheap but if it holds up much better in the freezer, I think a 30 cent premium on our meals isn't too bad. We finally worked through the starter roll that comes with the food saver so it took about 3 months. That means I won't need to buy more refills until the middle of 2018. Not bad.

Other than that, you do need quite a bit of clearance to fit the bag into the vacuum seal which seems a little wasteful too. I few times I didn't get it in well and the machine just tried to vacuum forever. 

Mostly though, I love it! So far everything we have defrosted from the Food Saver freezer bags has tasted great and definitely held up really well. It's only been a couple of months so it will be interesting to check in on some of that ground beef down the road and see if it still holds up.