Yea that be me... Make it at home. I vac seal beans, and mini meals.

I have a vacuum sealed pack of jerky that's been in the frige for a year or more.....is it safe to eat?

probably

TrafficJam wrote:

Wise Old Owl wrote:

Yea that be me... Make it at home. I vac seal beans, and mini meals.

So do you seal fresh food? How long does it last?

Deanna and I buy in bulk and also buy deer meat once a year, and we have every two months a vac seal party where we come home and put the system to work for two hours. We undo the cheap meat packaging and simply replace it. No freezer burn, no waste. You are moving the meats from cheap packaging to a "Wegmans" like product. That Gold foil packaging you may have noticed in the store is remarkably similar. You pay a little more at the store for that gold foil - but it lasts six + months in the freezer. My bags have done better than 1 and a half years. Some of the meat such as ham is not repackaged but pulled out on a regular basis and sliced at home on a large home slicer to make sandwiches. I only have to buy sliced cheese. We bake and make our own roast beef and Turkey with after season sales, again on the slicer.

We label and rotate the meats in a 1945 GE monster real freon freezer that still works. I won't give it up till it dies.... We defrost once a year and we can power it on a generator. We are not worried as there are three 1 gallon water jugs (Distilled) that are frozen at the bottom. They take three days to defrost, and they are drinkable in a emergency.

TrafficJam wrote:

My mom gave me her old vacuum sealer so I sealed three batches of tamales and put them in the freezer.

That got me thinking about how it could be used for trail food. What I want to know is if I vacuum seal something fresh like vegetables, chili, or spaghetti sauce, will it stay fresh longer, regardless of outside temps.

When I first started backpacking, I carried fresh spaghetti sauce in my pack. I didn't know about dehydrated meals. After one day, it stank pretty bad. For one or two nights, I could carry fresh food instead of dehydrated.

I'm going to try it when I can hike again.

Oh now I get it. OK the process is different for foods that are room temp - the vac bags are thicker and won't melt in FBC. (Freezer bag cooking) But steps are in place to make sure you won't get sick. So there are per-cooks, soaks in low sodium soy, acidify such as Vinegar.

vacuum sealed does take most of the oxygen out that could lower chance of going bad. No idea how accurate that is.

Yea it works... When you see Turkey Burger the plastic is puffed out with Methane.

TrafficJam wrote:

My mom gave me her old vacuum sealer so I sealed three batches of tamales and put them in the freezer.

That got me thinking about how it could be used for trail food. What I want to know is if I vacuum seal something fresh like vegetables, chili, or spaghetti sauce, will it stay fresh longer, regardless of outside temps.

When I first started backpacking, I carried fresh spaghetti sauce in my pack. I didn't know about dehydrated meals. After one day, it stank pretty bad. For one or two nights, I could carry fresh food instead of dehydrated.

I'm going to try it when I can hike again.

Vacuum sealing foods at room temperature that are not dehydrated is a waste of a Braun bag. The foods moisture content and ph level will cause rotting just as fast as normal.

Yup I missed that... got to dehydrate first.

Send it over to Socks to try. He'll give us a report.