Flash in the Pan

Vacuum food sealers can be a great way of keeping food for longer periods of time and I just had the chance to try the VacuWare system. There were some strong points, but also a pretty large weakness.

We've used a FoodSaver unit for a number of years (one that I reviewed for a newspaper column I used to write). But there were two problems I saw. One is that the FoodSaver equipment is large and you can't conveniently leave it out on a counter. The other is switching from bags to containers. Vacuum systems generally have to accommodate bags of some sort to store large items like meat and large whole vegetables. But the devices also need to support containers for cooked foods or bulk such as flour or coffee. With the FoodSaver you had to run plastic tubing from the vacuum unit to the special container or jar lid.

So I was at first delighted when VacuWare sent a review unit. The design seemed smart: an upright unit that would fit easily on a counter, taking up relatively little space. A wand rests over a seal on any of the containers, jar lids, or bags and pulls out the air. If you're traveling, there is also a hand pump that cuts the tether to an electrical outlet. And things worked well - with the containers. But bags are crucial and these were abysmal. Now, it's not as though FoodSaver bags are always the easiest things to use, particularly if you have one of the rolls of bag material that you cut to length, sealing one end, adding the food, then using the FoodSaver to suck out the air and close off the other end. Getting that first seal can be tricky, particularly with some of the lower-end models that don't give a lot of room for error when placing that first open end of the bag.

Unfortunately, the VacuWare bags made me think I had been in food storage heaven in the past. We tried packing up some pork chops. I carefully followed the directions, leaving empty space between the spot you place the wand and the top of the bag. I pulled away the strip covering the adhesive spot, folded it over as instructed, pressed it down properly, and used the wand. At first it didn't seem to work, which I wrote off to getting used to the new system. So I tried again and, yes, the air was sucked out and the bag pulled in around the food. That lasted until I detached the wand, at which point air started flooding back in and the bag expanded again. I tried this a couple more times but with no improvement. Also, unlike FoodSaver bags, these didn't look as though they'd last a microwave oven or in boiling water as another way to reheat leftovers.

My wife got on the phone to call customer service. The system told her to hold, and she waited. And waited. Seven minutes later, still not having heard a human voice and nor being given an idea of how long things might take, she hung up. Maybe the customer service people were busy trying to help others figure out how to make the damned bags work. It could be that we were doing something wrong, but, hello, I'm a consumer. If it's this tough to use the device correctly, either the company needs to include far better instructions or it needs to make the product more intuitive to use. Or maybe it just needs to make things work better.

The upshot is that we'll probably keep this around to use on the VacuWare containers and on jars with the special lid, because it is more convenient for such things than the FoodSaver. But if you ever need bags to store items in a freezer, you can't count on this being the only system you get. And with the kits running from about $160 to $200, that isn't something you want to hear.

UPDATE: I received a response from the company about the weaknesses I found with the product. Here is the blog post.

Labels: product, review, storage, system, vacuum, vacuware