Four Ways to Make the Most of Your Commercial Vacuum Sealer

Vacuum sealers have become an extremely popular kitchen machine in recent years. They make it easy to preserve food, seal jars and reseal bags. You can even use a sealer for sous-vide cooking.

What is a Vacuum Sealer?

There are two kinds of vacuum sealers commercially available: the chamber vacuum sealer and the non-chamber or channel vacuum sealer. Chamber vacuum sealers are typically larger than non-chamber sealers, and they are used mostly in large commercial restaurants. To use a chamber vacuum sealer, you need to fill commercial vacuum sealer bags or sous-vide bags with the food you wish to store. The bags are then placed in the chamber and attached to a sealing bar. Once secured, close the machine lid, and the vacuum process can commence. Inside the chamber, the machine sucks out all the air and creates a complete vacuum inside the bag. Once this process is complete, you can activate the sealing bar to heat the bag and melt the plastic closed. Sealing takes about two to three seconds. The main advantage of using a chamber vacuum sealer is that it can seal several vacuum bags at the same time, and the machine can seal liquid as well as solid foods. The non-chamber vacuum sealer is a smaller machine that is more popular in smaller kitchens. A vacuum bag containing the desired food item attaches to the device, and it sucks the air out through a narrow channel to create a vacuum inside the bag. After completing this process, the machine heat-seals the bag closed. The drawback of using this type of sealer is that the machine is unable to vacuum seal soft or liquid foods, as they get sucked out of the bag through the vacuum sealing channel. Despite this, non-chamber vacuum sealers are a more affordable way to vacuum pack foods, and there are a few hacks to get around the limitations. If you want to vacuum seal soft or liquid foods, all you have to do is freeze them so they become solid. You then seal the food as usual and store it in the freezer. As vacuum and sous-vide bags are microwave safe and resistant to boiling temperatures, you’ll be able to cook your frozen food easily when the time comes. Here are four hacks that can help you make good use of your vacuum sealer:

1. Preserve Your Food for Longer Than Usual

One of the most popular — and most obvious — uses of a vacuum sealer is for food preservation. Preserving with a vacuum machine for food can help double or triple the shelf life of many foods. Red meat and poultry usually last from 6 to 12 months if stored in regular freezer bags, but with vacuum sealing, the meat can stay fresh in the freezer for one to three years. Vacuum sealing meat also prevents freezer burn, which degrades quality once it is defrosted. You can even use your vacuum sealer to preserve pantry foods such as ground coffee, flour, nuts and cereals, and these items can then stay stored for one to three years, which triples the time you’d typically expect. You can use your sealer to store dried foods and spices that will stay fresh for several years. There are also special attachments for dry-canning to reseal jars full of dried food. All you need to do is place a coffee or paper filter on top of the food so that it doesn’t get sucked up into the machine during the canning process. You can even preserve liquids and soaps with your vacuum sealer. If you are using a chamber sealer, then you’re good to go straight away, but remember, if you have a non-chamber vacuum sealer, you must freeze your liquids first.

2. Marinate Foods Quicker

Marinating meat and vegetables is a great way to produce some of the most delicious dishes in your kitchen. The only problem with conventionally marinating meat or vegetables is that the process takes a long time. Most recipes tell you to marinate your food for an average of 12 to 24 hours to infuse the flavors most effectively. This could become quite tricky in a busy restaurant kitchen or if you don’t have the free time to prepare food in advance. With your vacuum sealer machine, you’ll be able to do this in minutes. All you need to do is follow a few simple steps:

• First, place your meat and marinade into a commercial vacuum bag with a hose attachment, or use the special marinade attachment if your vacuum sealer has one.
• Next, begin sealing the bag as usual. Sealing the bag pulls the liquid ingredients through the meat to tenderize and marinate it quickly.
• Before completing the vacuum process, you’ll need to release the vacuum’s pressure to allow the marinade to move back through the meat or vegetables and marinate it deeply.
• Turn on the vacuum once more and seal the bag off.
• Finally, store the marinating food in the fridge until you’re ready to cook.

If you have a non-chamber vacuum sealer, you can use special marinade attachments. Alternatively, you can freeze the meat and marinade together before vacuum sealing it. Once it’s sealed, you can let the package defrost at room temperature to marinate your meat or vegetables effectively.

3. Make a Reusable Emergency Ice Pack

Ice packs can be quite expensive to buy from your local pharmacy or supermarket. Using your vacuum sealer instead can slash that cost down to almost zero. All you need to do is vacuum seal a bag of clean tap water. Fill a new vacuum bag with water and seal it with your chamber vacuum sealer machine or freeze it first to seal it with your non-chamber vacuum sealer. Then store the bag in the freezer until you need to use it.

4. Dabble in Sous-Vide Cooking

Sous-vide cooking is an effective way to cook meat and other proteins perfectly, and you eliminate the risk of ever overcooking your meat. Sous-vide cooking works by vacuum sealing your raw meat, poultry or fish in a sous-vide or vacuum sealer bag, then cooking the sealed bag in a water bath at a constant temperature. The water bath maintains a constant temperature that never fluctuates the way a boiling pot of water does. The meat inside your vacuum bag can then slowly rise to match the temperature before cooking perfectly through. This method is excellent for prep-cooking a large number of steaks. You can set each water bath to the optimum temperatures for rare, medium-rare, medium or well-done steaks. Once you’re ready to serve the steak, you only need to sear it quickly on your grill. You could cook all your steaks, chicken or fish in the sous-vide method, then store them in the fridge for up to a week. Sous-vide cooking is also much healthier. Since the meat cooks to tender perfection, you won’t need to over-season to mask any cooking mistakes. You can also cook the meat without seasoning, as the flavors of the food do not disperse into the air. Your commercial vacuum sealer can help you get better cooking and storage results in your kitchen, making it one of the most invaluable devices in any modern commercial kitchen.