Food Sealer

Chris here... We've had numerous people ask us about our food sealer. We are using a Rival Seal-A-Meal and it seems to be working well, but time will tell. It was the cheapest one at Target. We looked at all of them there, and since we couldn’t really tell whether the $150 sealer and the $50 sealer would actually work differently, we went with the cheaper one. The bags were also half the price of the other units. The only thing we’ve had poor luck sealing is pasta. We put the pasta in the bag and hit the vacuum button, and proceeded to watch all of our pasta crack and crumble. Then, to top off the destruction of all of our pasta, the sharp corners of what was left poked pinholes in the bags and let all the air in. Long story short, pasta doesn’t seem to work so well in a food sealer if it's single bagged. Non-toasted coconut that was still damp was an issue - it wouldn't seal - maybe the oils? Fresh baked chocolate chip cookies got completely squished into a large cookie mass, but that could be chubby to eat.

We also have found that it's easier as a two person operation with this unit - one to hold the bag, and one to push on the sealing lid. We don't know if the other units are any better, but we can't see them being that much better. You can do it by yourself, but it's easier with two people. It takes a little practice to learn how large to make the bags.

As I typed this, I learned something. Some vacuum sealers have the ability to stop the vacuum portion of the process before it's finished. This would enable you to move right to sealing the bag if you start crushing something. We'd recommend finding a sealer with this feature.

We'll keep you informed as we continue to seal items.