1787

Just as a warning, you should be careful about sous vide of prepackaged things like meat. Not all the plastic bags that are food safe at low temperature are safe at high temperature. If something intended to be microwaved or boiled in the bag you are obviously fine but generally you should rebag things.

1788

Yeah, very often when Iā€™m preparing something sous vide I put one bag in the bath, one in the fridge for tomorrow and one in the freezer.

1789

No worries at all. You and I are both learning with these things. It sure sounds like from what others here have posted there are third party bags that will work, possibly for both of us.

I need to work this thing into my routine so the use of it will stick.

1790

One thing I didnā€™t mention. Donā€™t buy pre cut bags. They are indeed ridiculously expensive. Buy them in rolls and cut them to size. You can get like 100ā€™ of 8" wide bags material for under $20. Cut to size, seal one end, fill and then vac seal. Something like this is what I buy:

They should work with pretty much any vacuum sealer.

1791

Right, but @Hansey seems to have a one-off that doesnā€™t have a heat sealer and relies on special bags. Iā€™d ebay it away if possible and get a regular one.

1792

Oh, the bags with valves? They suck. Donā€™t do that.

1793

Since weā€™re on the subject, I bought a couple of reusable food bags (aka ziploc) and they work pretty well! Not the easiest thing to clean but I just felt bad burning so many gallon bags while making jerky.

1794

Correct. Iā€™m not even certain itā€™s worth ebay-ing to be honest.

Yeah. I didnā€™t buy it, just ā€œinheritedā€ it. Thus the questions. :) It seems clear from the comments here that the proper full-sized units are worth it though.

1795

Another tip: avoid any fancy models that are automated, the most important feature in my opinion is one that lets you just put a bag in, close it, and hit Seal. I ā€œupgradedā€ to a fancier FoodSaver and it forces me to trip a sensor shoving the bag in a slot no matter what so that it always attempts to vacuum seal and I have to sacrifice an inch of the bag to make it work, make sure yours is a simple clamshell without all the sensors and checks and blah blah. Sometimes you just want to seal a bag. In fact most of the time youā€™ll just want to seal a bag, hard vacuum sealing is nearly the secondary use.

1796

Huhā€¦it looks like you can use reusable silicone bags for sous vide? Interesting. I wonder if thereā€™s any down sides, other than losing out on the freezer-to-water bath storage convenience.

1797

You can also reseal all sort of other packaged foods using just the heat seal function. I have bags of various dried beans. Iā€™ll open the bag and pour some out for overnight soaking and then seal the opening with the heat sealer.

1798

Thatā€™s where it annoys me, I open a bag of chips and maybe 1/10th of the bag is a serving, and I donā€™t eat them that much so I would waste at least 1/2 the bag when it went stale. So nice just to knife a clean edge and reseal the bag, they last weeks and months that way. I really donā€™t need my bag of tortilla chips vacuum sealed, for obvious reasons.

1799

I use bag clips and they work fine. Have you tried them?

1800

Regular bag clips suck. Get with the future, man. And by future I mean slide clips, which are amazing. Perfect seal every time, easy to use, reusable, and no electricity required.

1801

I have, and while they are certainly better than just rolling up the mouth of the bag and putting it back in the cabinet, thereā€™s something that satisfies my OCD about knowing the foodstuffs have essentially remained bagged even after opening. If they made them where they were beartrap-esque then I could get back behind them.

1802

We have one. One huge issue is that they are for one thing ā€¦ chips. You can use those other clips on things like opened bags you put back in the freezer, bread that you your significant other mysteriously always looses the tie for, rice bags, etc. At least thatā€™s how we use the clips. The one slide we have was one someone left on a chip bag on the boat. Itā€™s okay but finicky. you have to flatten the bag out just right or it gets bound up when attaching, which is worse for cheaper chip bags. Lays and other nicer bags are fine.

1803

I use mine on the cheapest bags in existence, it works fine. You might have picked up an off-brand slider.

1804

Probably, as mentioned it was left by someone else. We also have fantastic clips, which is why we use those more. The best one has something akin to a soft rubbery piece on each side so when you clip a bag with it, itā€™s wide enough that it seals the bag and holds really well. The smaller ones, yeah, not a big fan.

1805

I have a similar Food Saver model and yes it requires that you insert about an inch of the bag. Thatā€™s the only down side I see to it and its a minor one to me. I had a simple clam shell sealer first and the seal was always hit or miss but the Food Saver pretty much guarantees a solid seal. I havenā€™t had a seal fail in a sous vide with the FS but I did with the clamshell sealer. Also, when you donā€™t need the vac part, you just insert and hit the ā€œsealā€ button. It does engage the vac at first but its shuts off as soon as you press ā€œsealā€. Iā€™ve never found that to be much of an issue. Each to their own, but I prefer the fancier model to the simple sealer.

1806

Itā€™s a model thing, mine doesnā€™t have a way to easily seal without insertion. Even if I push the two buttons that break it apart and place the bag, the bag still has to hit the sensors just right to let me try to seal it. Iā€™m guessing I got the wrong one, is what Iā€™m saying. Mine is built such that there is no real option to just open it and seal something but I know that many other versions do so. My point is to be careful not to get mine, I guess, not that they are all equally bad.

As an example, I would be all over a simple thing that cost 15 bucks and didnā€™t have the vacuum at all, just the heat sealer.