Vacuum sealer (for sous vide etc)

[citoyen]

Anyone have a vacuum sealer to use for things like sous vide cooking and fermentation? Looking at what's out there, the sky is very much the limit - I've seen professional grade machines upwards of £5k, but budgetary constraints mean I'm more interested in the £50 end of the market.

Question is, are the £50 machines any good? Or do I need to spend more to get something that won't fall apart in 5 minutes?

[jsabine]

Do you need a machine, or can you get away with vacuum bags and a little handpump?

When I took chrisbainbridge's Anova sous vide circulator off his hands a year or so ago he chucked in a box of bags (zip-lock with a one-way valve) and a manual extractor, and they're working fine for us.

(The pic that linked me to here looked like the same pump, but Amazon isn't showing pics for me today.)

[Regulator]

We've got one of the mid range BonsenKitchen vacuum sealers.  Works very well.  We tend to use it for either sous vide or breaking down large packs of uncooked meat for the freezer.

[citoyen]

Do you need a machine, or can you get away with vacuum bags and a little handpump?

Hadn't considered a manual version, tbh, but it sounds interesting. How reliable are the seals on the ziplock bags? It will be mostly used for fermentation rather than sous vide, so needs to be able to hold the seal for a week, at least.

[citoyen]

We've got one of the mid range BonsenKitchen vacuum sealers.  Works very well.  We tend to use it for either sous vide or breaking down large packs of uncooked meat for the freezer.

Do you know which model? I was looking at the Bonsenkitchen sealers on amazon and they get mixed reviews. Some reviews suggest the sealing isn't very reliable. What's your experience on that?

[citoyen]

This one looks tempting for the price, but it needs "embossed" bags... not sure if that's a good or a bad thing... any thoughts?
 
https://www.sousvidetools.com/vacuum-sealers/magic-vac-compact

[Regulator]

We've got one of the mid range BonsenKitchen vacuum sealers.  Works very well.  We tend to use it for either sous vide or breaking down large packs of uncooked meat for the freezer.

Do you know which model? I was looking at the Bonsenkitchen sealers on amazon and they get mixed reviews. Some reviews suggest the sealing isn't very reliable. What's your experience on that?

Ours is a VS3803.  We've not had a problem with it. It take a few goes to get the knack but the sealing has been reliable for us.

[neilrj]

We just use a cheap bag sealer from Lidl/Aldi it works just as well for sous vide as it does for sandwiches/freezer packs. If vacuum sealing a soup it just means the machine needs to be higher than the bag (dangling a heavy bag might get messy )
The art of sous vide is in the water bath temperature control.

[nuttycyclist]

Isn't single use plastic a thing that is frowned upon in this planet saving day and age?

[Regulator]

Isn't single use plastic a thing that is frowned upon in this planet saving day and age?

Ours is made from recycled plastic and is washed and recycled again after use.

[neilrj]

Isn't single use plastic a thing that is frowned upon in this planet saving day and age?

You just start with a big(ger) plastic bag, and seal it, then just cut the seal off and as it says on shampoo "rinse and repeat". Probably takes a strip of 12mm for each 're-use'.
As the bags are vacuum sealed they don't balloon/float, the empty bit just sort of coils out of the way.

[jsabine]

Do you need a machine, or can you get away with vacuum bags and a little handpump?

Hadn't considered a manual version, tbh, but it sounds interesting. How reliable are the seals on the ziplock bags? It will be mostly used for fermentation rather than sous vide, so needs to be able to hold the seal for a week, at least.

It's worked fine for us, with no indication at all of the seals letting by, but we've not asked it to do more than four or five hours in a water bath. I've got no reason to think it would start to misbehave.

Now that I can see the pictures again, the kit I linked to does look very similar to the one we have, though I'm sure we've got more than 5 bags. (Don't actually know how many, TBH, as we've just kept re-using the same one.)

[ian]

Do people regularly sous-vide stuff, I thought that had died from hipster plague?

There are even ones that look like terrifying sex toys from the future.