So what do you think I consider the greatest invention ever, or a really good invention? It's the Vacuum Sealer. Why do I say this? As a family we have been making from scratch food forever in our household, and buying food in bulk, which gives us the ability to save food in a manner which preserves it without oxygen, or reduced oxygen.
Another thing we use the almighty vacuum sealer for is to preserve food in our restaurant. We would smoke beef briskets, cut them into thicker slices, smoke them again, then dice the thick slices, add them to a vacuum sealer bag with some BBQ sauce and that was our recipe for burnt ends. When a customer would order burnt ends, we would pull a bag out of the refrigerator, warm it up, throw it on a plate, and out the door.
Let's talk about marinading. The fastest and most effective way to marinade something, is to pour your marinade into the vacuum bag, add what you want marinaded, set the vacuum sealer on "moist" then hit the vacuum/seal button. As soon as you see the liquid started to move to the top of the bag, just hit the seal button. In a short time, your meat, or whatever you are marinading will be ready.
How about Cheese? After you open cheese, did you ever notice how fast it get's moldy? If you vacuum seal the cheese after use, your cheese will last much longer. We also cold smoke cheese quite often and then vacuum seal it after it is out of the smoker.
Another trick you can use is to leave the bags extra long, and after you use some product out of the bag you can reseal the bag if you have enough bag left. That's why you leave it extra long when you are doing your original packaging.
