Ilene,

I have a Food Saver but it was a Christmas gift and I haven't even taken it out of the box yet. I don't expect I'll use it for anything until harvest season is in full swing.

Foodsavers are discussed often on the Harvest Forum and I know that Ken used to discuss using his vacuum sealer to seal the Food Saver canisters, but I don't remember if he ever mentioned using it to seal jars. Since he was banned, we can't ask him either....but other folks there use Foodsaver and other vacuum sealer systems a lot and I bet someone there would have the answer to your questions if no one here does.

Since my brain is empty of first-hand Food Saver info, I went and found one discussion from the Harvest Forum that might have the answer to your questions.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Using the Food Saver to Seal Jars

If you do opt for the Foodsaver try to find the machine itself used on Ebay or Craigslist if you can. A lot of people seem to buy them then later realize they can't afford the bags so they just sell them off. You can usually find them in almost new condition. Then you can opt for purchasing the attachments new if they didn't already come with the machine when you bought it.

As far as using either machine--I'm not sure because I've never used them. I will say though, I'm not sure I trust the tape either. I'd hate to see you have air seep back in after you've done the work.

I've been on the Harvest forum reading and have read that link you sent me, Dawn. Several others, too.

Nowhere though do I find where someone has used both products and can say whether the cheap-o one does what the expensive one does.

I had no idea Ken was banned. I posted once on Harvest and somebody jumped all down my throat so I won't post there anymore. Or even go there very often because I've seen them do that to others too. I never saw Ken jump on anyone but I saw plenty of them jump on him. I just don't think forums are the place for all that arguing.

Mandy, I've been looking on eBay. I read where Ken on the Harvest forum recommended signing up for specials on the FoodSaver website because he said he got one for $60-something that way. So I did that too....

I didn't want to say until I made sure I was right, but I just went back on eBay to check and they actually want more for the FoodSaver machines on eBay than I'd have to pay for a new one with free shipping on Amazon.

Ilene,

Someone did ask this past summer about the smaller hand-operated vacuum sealers, but I don't remember their exact question or the answer they received.

I don't post there at the Harvest Forum either....but I lurk there a lot in the summer looking for good canning recipes.

Ken really knows his stuff about food preservation and probably has as much or more hands-on experience as anyone there, except perhaps for the ones there who work for the extension service or who are Master Food Preservers and teach the classes. He was cordial about 95% of the time, and I guess I missed whatever he said that caused him to be banned since I don't visit that website regularly. I noticed in either September or October that he wasn't around and searched around until I found the 'where's Ken?' thread. I did notice this summer he was on a real tear for a while....saying in a pretty rude manner that newbies should search the back pages for old threads on their topic instead of posting new ones that were duplicates. Maybe he said that in an uncivil manner just one too many times for the GW administrators. (It's their site and, of course, they have a perfect right to police it as they see fit.) I kept thinking Ken might come back, like Al Tapla did after he was briefly banished from GW recently but it has been quite a while now and still no Ken. I think it is a loss to the Harvest Forum and to GW that Ken is no longer posting there.

I agree that forums aren't the place for all that arguing. I don't think anyone here on our forum wants to argue or butt heads with anyone else here, but some forums do have some people who have very stong opinions and they do not always (as you've noticed) express them in the most civil manner.

I hope you get an answer. Have you tried Googling Consumer Reports magazine and Food Saver or the name of the smaller, cheaper vacuum sealer systems to see if they've run a comparison test and evaluated them head-to-head? It wouldn't surprise me....it seems like the kind of test they'd do, but I don't think I've seen one.

Dawn

Thanks Dawn, I went and read that "Where's Ken" thread. He may have left of his own choice from the way it sounds. Looks like one of the guys is still in contact with him. I never found him to be a problem. Had several good conversations with him. He is not the person who jumped me. It was a woman who apparently is some sort of expert.

I did just go to Consumer's reports. They did test a machine by Tilia, which is connected to the Food Saver, and something else, but compared them against just ziplock bags in the freezer, not testing the vacuum sealing in jars. That was a good idea to try, though, I hadn't thought of that.

Pump-n-seal says they are better than Tilia, but then I don't know if that's legit, since it's on their website. So hard to tell.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pump-n-seal's

Before I went to bed last night I found some lengthy conversations about Pump-n-Seal and FoodSaver on a website called "Chowhound". There were several threads, all of which I read, and this is one. Some of the others are listed if you scroll down on that site.

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/650398

The gist of what was said on this forum was that some people got FoodSavers that really didn't last very long. Apparently you need to read the instructions carefully and do all the do's and not do any of the don'ts. Some people, on that forum and also on the Amazon.com reviews, had a lot of trouble getting the FS jar-sealing attachments to seal jars. Some people were getting the jar-sealing attachments confused with the "universal lids", which are two similar but totally different things -- mostly because the universal lids are meant to stay on the container, in place of any other kind of lid, and the jar-sealing attachments are meant to seal down a canning flat and then be removed and used to seal another..and another.. and so on. That's what had me confused for awhile. Some people were finding that the jars they used had to be new and of a certain shape and not have any little imperfections where the jar sealer attachment seats onto because if it can't seal itself onto the jar, temporarily, it can't vacuum out the jar. And of course your jar rim and lid have to be clean, and the lid has to be in good shape, though you can re-use the lids as long as you are careful each time you open the jar to release the pressure. Some people found it worked better if they pushed down on the jar sealer while it was in operation.

Apparently some folks had a lot of trouble with the PnS when it came to sucking the air out of a zip-lock bag. You've got to be really good at it in order to pull the tube out of the bag and then finish the zipping process without losing the vacuum in the bag. And of course there's the issue of the ziplock bag not being high quality enough bag material to hold the vacuum once it's been sealed. Lots of people tried the Zip-lock pump (they have new bags out now with a suction baffle on them that might lend themselves better for use with the PnS). But everybody said the Zip-lock pump was a piece of junk. So it looks to me like, if a person ever thought they'd need to use the part that sucks the air out of bags, they probably should go with the FoodSaver. Most people said they didn't like how they had to waste 2 or 3 inches of the bag on both ends because the bag sensor that triggers the heat sealer is that far from the heat sealing strip. But other than that, most of them had found other ways to solve the problem of how expensive the bags are (catching them on sale, washing and reusing bags if they didn't contain meats, and buying off-brands) Ken said, on one of his posts on Harvest, that he had a separate heat-sealer that he always sealed the bottoms of his bags with, and at least saved the 2-3 inches there. If I ever get a FS, I guess I could use the Pak'n Save that I have now for that. You have to use the heavier-weight bag material because if you try to seal a regular ziplock bag on it, the bag will melt all over the sealing strip and can ruin it. But people said they resealed potato chip and cereal bags from the store with the FS, without using the vacuum part, without problems.

According to the chart that is on the PnS site, the one I linked in the previous post, the PnS, at 28.9 inches HG and the FoodSaver, at 24.2 inches HG are the only two with the ability to pull sufficient pressure. My Pak'n Save was next on the list at only 2.5 inches HG.

Of course there is the chance of sucking up liquids and ruining your equipment, or preventing the seal from working. Same with powdery stuff like flour. One person solved the powdery stuff problem by putting it in a bag inside the jar. This kept the powder in the jar better while still being able to remove the air, both from the inside of the jar AND the bag inside the jar. Someone else said the instructions with the machine suggest you freeze liquids and foods that have liquids that leak from them, like meats, before you vacuum seal. One guy said he freezes soup, vacuum seals it in bags, and mails it to his kids. By the time the soup gets there it's thawed and ready to eat. I sure wouldn't recommend this. Good way to knock off your kids, though, if that's what you're interested in. Heh.

There was also some discussion of the vacuum crushing things like potato chips and cookies and some people said that they vacuum sealed potato chips and listened to the chips snapping under the pressure for several hours after. Might be a great home-school science project. There's a You-Tube of a marshmallow that was pressure sealed in a jar that people say is quite entertaining. I haven't seen it but I imagine the marshmallow expands like it does in the microwave. If you think about it, there are some things that you buy at the store that are packed with air in the bag. Such as chips and cookies.

On the PnS site, they had a reprint of an article done by the Chicago Tribune back in 2006. Of course it being on the PnS site, one would not know if they had edited it in places to make it sound more favorable to their product. So I went to the website of the Chicago Tribune and paid $3 for their archived article and the two versions were the same. The author of the article said they "fell in love" with the PnS, but then according to them, the FoodSaver did what it was supposed to do, too. Now, this is not definitive proof, because I've met newspaper reporters and they are not.... like, experts or anything. But the article did say that the seal was still good after "more than a couple of weeks" in the jars that they sealed.

An added advantage of the PnS over the FS is that the PnS is small enough you can just put it in a drawer when you're done using it. The FS takes up a little counter space. Something that is a scarce commodity in my kitchen. And PnS is hand-operated so no noise and no electricity needed. They say it's quicker, too, and good for when you're away from home, like camping,etc. You can use it to repressure pop bottles so the contents won't go flat, they say.

Hmmmmmmm. Maybe both these places should send me an advertising fee or something.

What I'm thinking, for the time being, is that I might go ahead and spend the $30 and get one of those Pump-n-Seal contraptions. They said on Chowhound that the bowl covers Pump-n-Seal sells are not worth the money, but I was just planning on ordering the basic package and not the more expensive one that includes a couple of bowl covers, anyway.

Once I have it, then I might look it over and see if the tube of it looks like it would fit into the FoodSaver jar-sealing attachments. If so, then I could just order the jar-sealing attachments and use them with the PnS. Maybe those little pieces of tape would hold the vacuum in just fine, I don't know, but I would want to test that out before I did anything large scale. It would be easy enough to know you've lost pressure when the canning flat falls off the jar, right? Heh.

Who knows, maybe I will happen upon a FoodSaver at a garage sale or estate sale this summer. Or maybe now that I'm registered on the FoodSaver website, they will send me an e-mail that tells me they're running a 24-hour half-price sale, as they did for Ken, when he was still posting on the Harvest forum.

OK, so Dawn, did you get the jar sealer attachments with the FoodSaver that you got for Christmas?

Ilene,

Wow, you could write a newspaper or magazine article after all the research you've done.

The jar sealer attachment did not come with mine, but I can buy if for $8.99 for the regular jar sealer and $9.99 for the widemouth jar sealer. In addition to the machine itself, mine came with one roll of plastic for bags, 1 pkg. of 12 one-quart bags and the 2 & 1/4 quart quick marinator. Santa Claus also brought a box of three extra rolls of plastic.

I opened the box and took out the manual and other printed material and one flyer shows several kinds of lids you can buy that are made for use with the Food-Saver. They have universal lids in a 4" and 5 & 1/2" size that can be used to reseal some food items in their original container, provided the original container was either thick glass jars or rigid plastic. They have the jar sealer attachments for the two standard jar lid sizes and they specify they are intended for use with Kerr or Ball Mason jars. They also say in the manual to use only the freezer style straight-walled jars with no shoulders if the jars are going into the freezer after they are vacuum-sealed. They have a set of 3 Foodsaver Bottle Stoppers that can be used to vacuum package bottles like wine or olive oil bottles.

I looked at the Troubleshooting page in the manual and here's what it lists if "The Mason jar will not vacuum":

"1. The Jar Sealer is designed for use with Ball and Kerr Mason jars.

2. Check Jar Sealer to see if it is centered and pressed firmly over Mason jar lid.

3. Make sure rubber gasket on Jar Sealer is free from food materials.

4. Examine rim of Mason jars for cracks or scratches. Any gaps can prevent jars from vacuuming properly.

5. Check metal lid of Mason jar to see if it is bent.

6. Make sure Accessory Hose is securely in Accessory Port on appliance and on Jar Sealer.

7. Try using two jar lids instead of one. Remove second lid from Jar Sealer when vacuum process is finished."

I am registered on the FoodSaver website and get sales notices pretty regularly, so I expect you will as well.

There are some companies that sell Foodsaver-type rolls of plastic bag material at a lower cost and some of them are good quality and some aren't. Last summer Digdirt posted a link to one of those companies that he's used and been happy with. I need to find it and see if their prices are better than the FS bags on the website, at Wal-Mart and at Costco. CostCo often has coupons for the FS bags in their monthly coupon booklet but I haven't opened up this month's coupon booklet yet to see if there are any FS coupons in it.

Dawn

Hi, I am new to this site. Just thought I would pass along a PROMO I got in a newsletter a few weeks ago. There doesn't seem to be an expiration date. If you go to www.thevakshack.com and enter the PROMO: THEVAKSHACK you get 15% off of your entire order of replacement foodsaver bags. They are already way cheaper than any other site I have seen. Let me know if you have trouble and I will forward you the e-mail I had.

Here is a link that might be useful: 15% promo

No experience with canning but I have a Foodsaver I ADORE! There are crazy bargains on the machines from time to time. I got mine for under $80.

Right now they are 25% off online

but if you feel like waiting for a deal, you can do better (sometimes half off or more).

Here is a link that might be useful: Foodsaver sale