Household / Small Appliances / Reynolds Handi-Vac Vacuum Sealer

Every year for Christmas, my family gets together on Christmas Eve for a big family party.  We eat, open gifts and play games.  One game we always play every year is Dirty Santa and we usually tell everyone to get a uni-sex gift that is $10.00 or less.  This year, while trying to find my gift, I came across the vacuum sealer at Wal-mart and I thought that would be a nifty gift for anyone.  Not only would women who cook a lot in the kitchen enjoy it, but guys who might prepare or freeze meat would probably get some use out of it too.  So, it came home with me and guess who ended up with it after Dirty Santa was over...yep...me!

So, I took it home and after struggling for a while to even get the package open, I took everything out and gave it a shot.  Included in this starter kit was the actual vacuum sealer, 3 - quart sized vacuum freezer bags and batteries.  For supper, I decided to cook chicken and use the sealer to freeze the leftovers. 

It worked pretty easily.  I put the chicken flat in the bag, made sure it was away from the suction hole and sucked all the air out and tossed it in the freezer.   A few days later, when I was preparing chicken again,  i noticed that while it had kept pretty much all the air and freezer burn away from the chicken, the seal had begun to come loose just a bit.

For the money, it's a neat little gadget, but the freezer bags are kinda expensive and unless you store a lot of frozen foods for only a short time, you can do without it.