Several months ago (too many to accurately remember) my mom gave me her FoodSaver Vac550 vacuum sealer. I really wasn’t sure what I’d do with it but took it anyway. I don’t know why but I never really thought about vacuum packing my dehydrated meals.

Tonight I decided to break it out and see how well it worked and I was pleasantly surprised. She provided me with both rolls and bags. I decided to go with the quart-sized bags which are actually larger to account for what will be “wasted” once you seal it.

The bags are suitable for freezing, boiling, etc and are even reusable. However, I don’t know what I want to try cooking in one and then have to worry about cleaning it. I decided to carry a little extra weight by first putting my red beans and rice from the other night into quart-sized freezer bags which were left unsealed. Then I placed that bag inside the FoodSaver bag and sealed it all at once. This worked very well.

The entire process took about 15 seconds or less to suck all the air out and seal the bag. The unit instructs the user to wait 20 seconds between seals. That’s easy to do. I filled the time with measuring out my instant rice and labeling the inner bags. Now that everything is sealed I can’t wait to crack them open and rehydrate them.