Vacuum Sealing

A few weeks back, I picked up my first vacuum sealer.  SLF and I had been eying them and waiting on a decent one to go on sale.  The winner was this Sealer from Cabela's.  Normally $149 on 'sale' for $99.

Having never owned a vacuum sealer before, I figured I should test it and figure out how to use it.  I had the kids each grab a toy and bring it downstairs.  To their amusement, I practiced vacuum sealing their toys a few times and got it all figured out within 3 bags.

Last night I sealed up 8 bags of lingcod and 1 bag of rockfish.  I'm really impressed.  It's really easy to use and we got great results.  Halfway through, Linglady says: "Days like this make me wish we could live off the grid". 

 

Amen!

With food and gas prices on the rise, freezer filling with nature's goodies has become pretty important for our family. Almost out of salmon from last years haul, still quite a bit of bighorn sheep left, and a little elk.  I'll be putting in for a 'hair' tag this year for elk to replenish and hope to make a good effort w/ bottom fish and salmon and crab to fill in the rest. My dad bought me a food saver years ago that is still going strong!

I love my foodsaver!!!  I seal up all the fish I catch and the extended freshness makes it something I look forward to pulling out of the freezer and serving to friends and enjoying myself.  Now I have to find a good small freezer for the garage

One of my fav things to do is seal up all of my clam scraps and freeze them for crabbing.  I just poke some holes in the bag, put it in my trap bait box, and let it soak. 

I have both a foodsaver and a Oliso Frisper.  The foodsaver is good for big things, but I have been using the frisper for most of my fish.  I really like it because the bags are resealable.  The Frisper is also cheap, the starter pack is about $40 on  both amazon and at Next Adventure.   

I have the Cabelas CG-15 model. It has a manual setting so you can start the sealing process before the juices get sucked out of the bag. It works very well, and the food lasts a long time. We just had some Cabezon that I caught last April, and it tasted great! I bought some generic bags on Amazon and they also work well and are a lot cheaper than the Cabelas bags.

We've got a Foodsaver too.  Use it all the time when we buy some kind of meat that's more than we can reasonably eat.  I put some halibut cheeks in my freezer and didn't have a good chance to pull them out until 9 months later (I know, sacrilege).  They were still just as good as the fresh stuff that we cooked right away.

I just wish I lived close enough to MA 1-4 enough to make it economical to fill the freezer with rockfish and ling cod.  Between gas, ferry, campsites, etc it would be quite hard to beat the $5.99/lb for rockfish at Costco even if I limited every day of a 3 day trip. 

Guess I'll have to find some good places to catch flounder and greenling close to home.  Plus salmon.  SWMBO's not a huge fan of salmon (though when she made fish-n-chips with it she thought it was decent) so I'm not sure that a freezer full of coho/chinook would be wise.

She did say that she's hoping I come home with an elk this year.  Which is odd as she doesn't like elk (or deer) unless it's jerky.  Haven't shot an elk since 2007, or even a deer since 2009.

Besides meat, its great for vegetables. We use ours for corn on the cob. Just blanch it, dry it and seal it!

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I have the Cabelas CG-15 model. It has a manual setting so you can start the sealing process before the juices get sucked out of the bag.

After processing that 80 pounds of albacore last summer I became a big believer in wrapping fish in plastic wrap first before vacuum sealing. It adds another step, but really keeps the moisture on the fish and adds another layer against freezer burn.

Some people have suggested the paper towel method, but with the wrap, it doesn't seem necessary.

I bought  a Food Saver years (about 15) ago and it is still going strong.  I do like Ling Banger and use plastic wrap if I know the stuff will be in the freezer for more than a month.

You could always find someone to trade rock fish for salmon.

I took Lingbanger's advice last time we went to Depoe Bay and wrapped the fish filets in plastic wrap before vacuum sealing them. It was a great idea. Not only does it save my sealer motor from ingesting fish juice, but in my opinion the fish tastes better because it's retained a good amount of its original juices.


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The last thing I sealed with my Foodsaver was my new Li-ion battery.   I poked a small hole in the corner, bottom of the bag, fed the cables through, then sealed the hole and cables with a copious amount of silicon seal.  Let it dry a few days, then vacuum sealed the bag.

I'll have to try the plastic wrap pre-wrap. Sounds like a skookum idea.

Before I got my Foodsaver 350 several years ago, I was freezing my filets in regular freezer bags, and then taking them out of the bag and misting them to get a layer of ice on 'em, before stuffing them back into the bag and then using a soda straw to suck the air out as I sealed it.

I took Lingbanger's advice last time we went to Depoe Bay and wrapped the fish filets in plastic wrap before vacuum sealing them. It was a great idea. Not only does it save my sealer motor from ingesting fish juice, but in my opinion the fish tastes better because it's retained a good amount of its original juices.


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Don't give me credit, I got that idea from one of the OG's on here. Might have been PNW, G-Dog or CBY. Can't remember and too lazy to search, but it does work well.

I have the foodsaver and i love it