After seeing me on the Today Show, the friendly folks at Reynolds sent me a Handi-Vac vacuum sealer to test. Never one to shun freebies, especially those that might prevent food waste, I set out to do some experimenting.
This weekend, I began testing a Handi-Vac against a Ziploc bag. I stored green beans in a vacuum-sealed Handi-Vac bag and a regular old sealable one (as the control). 
I chose to use green beans as the research subject, partly because I had some lying around and partly because I’d hate to waste a nice cut of meat or fish–even in the name of future waste avoidance.
My working hypothesis, as Mr. Smith taught me to make in 7th grade, is that the vacuum sealing will delay decay.
While I won’t be sure how it works until then, here’s a quick comparison to the Frisper Freshkeeper, another vacuum sealer that I was sent:
–The Handi-Vac is much cheaper. It’s $10, compared with $80 for the Frisper.
–The Handi-Vac is smaller, but less powerful. As a result, it takes a bit longer to seal items.
–Unlike Frisper Freshkeeper bags, the Handi-Vac ones are not reusable. Frisper bags can be reused up to 20 times and gallon bags sell for about $1 each. Then again, Handi-Vac gallon bags sell for about a third of the price.
Stay tuned for the results, in about 10 days. While you’re waiting, here’s a little Handi-Vac game to kill some time.
Comments
7 responses to “Vac to Work?”
I love my Handi-Vac I use it on anything that I freeze. I even use it to freeze large batches of pancakes. I’ve found that it keeps the meat from getting frosty and since there is no air in the bag it makes defrosting the meat in a bowl of water way faster.
For bread items and vegetables I have been able to use them more than once but I wouldn’t try it with meat.
Thanks for the input, Jerry. I was wondering what would stop you from reusing the bags.
I have to say, the Handi-Vac’s size is certainly…handy. You could easily store it in a drawer and use it often.
That’s good to know, Jerry. If the bags were truly not re-usable, that would be very off-putting to me(I wash and rewash my regular plastic bags, seeing as I am The Frugal Girl!).
I’m curious to see the results!
I was ecstatic the first time I used my new Handi-Vac. However, once I found I couldn’t reuse the bags, I was disappointed in them. I had wanted to use the large bags for things like frozen chicken breasts, where I could remove a few to use and reseal the remainder. It doesn’t work that way. Although I was successful at sucking the air back out of the used bag (it took a lot of trying, and probably a lot of the battery power), I found the bag had leaked air back in after it was in the freezer for a few days. Now the Handi-Vac just sits in its drawer, unused…..too expensive in the long run.
Annie’s Granny
Not reusable?! F*** that! Avoiding food waste at the expense of generating mountains of plastic waste can’t be the answer, surely!
I agree… more plastic waste is not the answer. Food will biodegrade so much faster in a landfill than plastic will. And they say plastic leaches out chemicals into food (and also into the landfill, possibly contaminating ground water).