Hands down it is my food saver! That is because meat and fish are the most expensive food products that I purchase. I rarely pay full price for any of those things. This is just some of the cooked meat that I vacuum sealed from the turkey that I roasted about 10 days ago.
I roasted another large turkey for Thanksgiving. Today will be the third day of eating it. With the exception of what we need for dinner tonight, I will be vacuum sealing the rest of the meat in portion size bags for future meals.
I bought 3 turkeys this month at $ .87 and $ .48 a pound. I already had one in my freezer from last November which was perfectly fine. When I don’t buy them near Thanksgiving they will cost me anywhere from $1.69 up to $ 2.89 pound in my area. Since I normally buy 16 to 22 pound turkeys, this is a huge saving for meat. With my vacuum sealer I know that I can preserve this cooked meat up to a year and it will be as good as the day I cooked it.
This is the second food saver that I purchased and I am still using it. My first one I bought when they first came out and it lasted me many, many, many years.
When this one bites the dust, I already have a backup. I bought one for a really cheap price on Black Friday in 2019. I have never paid full price for one of them. They have always been purchased on a great sale.
I buy the sealer rolls so that I can make my own bags. I find these no more expensive to make bags than buying Ziplocs which do not keep the air out of your food. Air is the enemy of your meats. That is why they deteriorate in freezer bags over time and get freezer burn. I have never had freezer burn in a vacuum sealed bag even if it gets lost in the freezer. I buy my sealer rolls at the cheapest prices at Walmart and Amazon. I only buy the Food Saver brand rolls when they have a huge sale and they are cheaper than what I can buy at the stores. When I buy them I buy them in bulk.
Buying whole pieces of meat like pork tenderloins, beef tenderloins, and whole salmon and cutting them up into portions will preserve them a very long time using this method. So if I see a rock bottom price on chicken, beef, pork, salmon, or other fish or meats I can buy 20-30 pounds and know that they will last in the freezer up to a year or more.
I can use my food saver to vacuum seal dry foods like pastas, oatmeal, beans etc. in mason jars for long term storage. I wrote a post about that here a while ago.
I know that not everyone has a separate freezer. However I did not have one all the years we lived in Arizona. All I had was my refrigerator freezer and it was amazing how much you could store in it using my food saver, I was still able to save many dollars on meat.
In 2021, I believe that we will see prices rise drastically on many meats because of food shortages across the globe and the animals that were destroyed because the processing plants closed for a bit. Add to that the inflation that is inevitable and we are going to see huge increases in beef and other meats. So buy it while you can at cheaper prices now and preserve it in your freezer. In 2021, I am going to track my meat savings to see what I do save in a year’s time.
Lastly, I am opening up comments to anonymous. Let’s be helpful and polite to everyone. I do not want to have to ban anyone which I now have the capability to do.
Do you see meat prices rising in your area?
