Vacuum Sealing Vegetables

Vacuum Sealing Vegetables

Remembering the days.  The days when my grandmother use to can vegetables!  It was a huge and mysterious process, involving a number of glass jars, rubber gaskets and an element of danger.  If the jars were too hot and the pressure inside built up, the jars could have exploded. A possibility of sending flying glass everywhere.  For that reason, we children were not allowed in the kitchen while this was going on. Or maybe the element of danger and mystique it was a great excuse to keep us out of the way. 

Vacuum sealing is a much easier and safer process.  There is little danger, outside of burning one’s self with hot pans or boiling water, certainly not likely to be as dangerous as flying glass!

The New Vacupack Visaal  http://vacupack.com/commercial-vacuum-sealers-packers

Vacuum sealing vegetables can save time and money down the road.  If you buy fresh vegetables when they are in season, they are usually much cheaper than they will be if you wait and buy them later from the grocery store. During the summer and fall months when we harvest vegetables or buy them from local growers, we package our vegetables for use at a later time, using our VacUpack vacuum sealer.  It is easy to have control over the contents and the size of the packages.  We package  “soup mix” vegetables, mixed vegetables, corn, carrots, peas, green beans, potatoes and wax beans. We package them in sizes just right for our family, not forgetting to plan to have larger packages for holiday cooking.  Peeling potatoes on Christmas Day is a pain. It’s much easier to pull out a pre-packaged bag of potatoes and just throw it into a pot of boiling water, allowing us much more time to spend with our loved ones instead of sweating in the kitchen!

We have a standard home stove, so there are only four useable burners.  Save stovetop space by putting several packages of different vegetables into one big pot, freeing up your burners for other use. This method for vacuum sealing vegetables can be time consuming if you have a lot to do but it is a very easy process.  

The Vacupack SousVide Bags are built for this process.  Traditional Vacuum Sealing bags will leak the boiling water into the bag destroying the food. 

http://vacupack.com/roll-bags-pouches/sous-vide-bags

First, boil water in a large pot.  When the water is boiling, add your vegetables.  You do NOT want to cook them all the way through.  Leave them in the boiling water only until they are hot through.  Then, immediately remove them and place them in an ice water bath until they are cool.  Drain them and then vacuum seal them.   Label the packages with the contents and the date and place them in the freezer.  When you wish to eat them, simply put the bag into boiling water for a few minutes until the vegetables are hot and they will come out tasting as fresh as they day you bought them.

You can also simply let the vegetables thaw and use them for dips and vegetable trays as well.  Having pre-cut and pre-packaged vegetables is a huge convenience when entertaining and is a bit of a luxury when you think about the amount of work and cost that is saved by using a vacuum sealer.

Another thing we do with our VacUpack vacuum sealer is to package small packs of vegetables and freeze them, also pre-made meals, then we take them to grandmother’s.  She is getting on in years now and we provide these fresher vegetables, and homemade meals for her, which offer more nutrients than canned vegetables and traditional frozen store bought meals.  She loves to eat them and it is much easier for her to cook them rather than struggle with cans (her arthritis makes her hands weak). The fact is, the more you use your vacuum sealer, the more ideas you will have and you will be limited only by your imagination. 

Happy cooking! 

Written for PMG by:

Jacqueline Moderson
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Excellence in Customer Service/Support, Proofreading and Data Entry

www.vacupack.com

1-800-227-3769