Reynolds 00590 Handi-Vac Vacuum-Sealing Starter Kit
by Reynolds
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Our Price: $8.00
You Save: $6.99 (47%)
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Category: Kitchen
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Product Summary
Manufacturer: ReynoldsBrand: Reynolds
Model: 010900005906
Product features:
- Vacuum-sealing starter kit protects food from freezer burn and spoiling
- Compact and efficient handheld sealer operates on 6 AA batteries (included)
- Includes 3 quart-size polyethylene freezer bags with patented zipper closures and air valves
- Sealer removes air in seconds; microwave-safe bags offer convenient thawing
- Measures approximately 4 by 9-1/2 by 3-1/2 inches
Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of Reynolds 00590 Handi-Vac Vacuum-Sealing Starter Kit
Customer Review: It looks great, easy to handle, but does it really work?
Summary: 2 Stars
I too profess to beng a food saver junkie. I've had more vacumn sealing devices for food over the years then I really care to admit to.
Ever since first seeing that you oculd fit an entire wall eye salmon inside of one bag and vacumn pack it for the trip home I was hooked. And I do keep the usual staples of bags, and different jars and vacumn sealers under my kitchen counter for use every once in a long while.
I've been putting off buying the handi vac after having so many "industrial" reported vacumn machines and none of which really works as industrial as they pretend on the TV commercial, so how in the world could such a small handheld battery operated device seal up a bag of food from freezer burn or just to keep it a bit fresher. It seemed totally impossible.
But when one came on sale at the local big grocery store for only $3.50 I knew I had to at least try it or forver wonder if it was the one that got away.
Alas, unfortunately it's really not the end all, be all vacumn sealer. At first it did great. We make a lot of home made mac and cheese here so we always have a portion of a brick of velveeta cheese laying around in the fridge getting moldy, so I tried it out on the 3 or 10 partial bricks of velveeta and sure enough it sucked out a lot of the air until the bag clung onto the sides of the cheese. Here it is 2 weeks later and the bags are still as air tight as they were when I did them 2 weeks ago. So you might consider this to be a success, which as far as the velveeta cheese is concerned, it is. However...
Putting leftover uncooked rice into a one gallon size bag and sucking out the air until the uncooked rice resembled a weapon as hard as a brick was not such a success, neither was putting sugar into a one galon sized bag.
Both of these items will within the first hour, loose all suction and just resort to a one gallon bag of non vacumed food. Putting my favorite grain and marshmellow cereal into a one gallon bag and sucking out the air yielded the same results. Immediately it was a nice air tight brick, however within 1 hour, it was just a one gallon bag with some food product in it.
Deciding to take a chance with a nice Beef tenderloin (filet minion) steak I put one into a smaller bag, sucked out all the ar tha it was capable of doing until the bag clung tightly to the beef steak. I placed it into the freeser and left it there.
2 weeks later I pulled it out of the freezer to have a look at it only to sadly find some spots here and there that had freezer burn where the bag lost vacumn while in the freezer. My guess would be sometime within the first hour or so.
So, while it looks really cool when you can create a one gallon sized bag of sugar that is hard as a rock just don't plan on using it as your primary weapon to smash the rest of the vacumn devices you own because it will eventually lose vacumn and just be a loose bag of sugar aain.
So was it worth the $3.50 to buy the machine? No I can't honestly say that it is, if it actually held the vacumn seal for any great length of time as some of the more industrial sized units have done at least for a while, then sure, it'd be worth every penny and then some. But either through fault of the bag design (that's my guess and your stuck using their bags) or that the unit itself can't really pull down enough vacumn pressure, this thing just doesn't work for more than a small handful of sticky types of food to where the bags will naturally stick to the sides of the food thus helping to eliminate freezer burn and or help to lenghthen the time it spends in your cheese drawer.
It's certainly more convienient then dragging out one of the bigger units, but remember too how much the bags are at the local store. They are not cheap by any means and washing them inside out in the top rack of the dish washer has mixed results on the overall cleanliness of the bag. So the initial $3.50 outlay quickly rises as you find more and more things that absolutely have to have the air sucked out of the container, like your ground coffee, sugar, rice, breadcrumbs, fruit, vegetables, meat produts, extra cash and documents that you take on routine boating trips (yeah, don't we all own boats and need to protect our money and paper documents from the water? )
There's almost as many things that need to be placed in a vacumn sealed bag around the house and kitchen as there are things that need to be laminated when you first buy a laminating machine. And all these things keeping adding onto the price with the costs of more and more and more bags.
Description of Reynolds 00590 Handi-Vac Vacuum-Sealing Starter Kit
Reynolds Handi Vac starter kit is hand-held Vacuum Sealer that removes air from the patent pending vacuum freezer bags.Kitchen & Housewares
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