Speeding Food Prep was Re: Inaccurate Taste memories?

[Guest guest]

Lana-

>I'm thinking about getting a meat grinder - that would open a lot of

>fast easy meals (and easy ways to slip liver and heart into my SO).

>The other thing I was thinking of getting is one of those jet stream

>ovens. I hate the microwave.

>

>Any other ideas?

If you're using a microwave, I recommend you ditch it ASAP.

One way to save time is to make really huge batches of food and

freeze individual portions. I'll make a few gallons of chili or stew

or soup and then pour most of it into pint-sized ball jars,

vacuum-seal them and stick them in my freezer. A separate freezer,

of course, is a great investment for this purpose, and a vacuum

sealer can help a lot too.

I'm not positive what oven to suggest, but there are good convection

ovens out there, and Mercola sells something that at least looks interesting.

How many people do you have to cook for?

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[Guest guest]

The only vacuum seal system for canning jars I'm familiar with is Food

Saver, and they charge upwards of $8 per lid. Too much for me. Do you

use another brand, or could you recommend a different source for the

lids [question for anyone here]?

I'm not entirely comfortable using plastic bags for freezing foods, but

I suppose I'd do it as a last resort.

Lana, personally I only make two big entrees per week. They are usually

cooked in my roaster. I spend about 15 minutes a day doing food prep.

Christa

--- In , Idol <Idol@c...>

wrote:

>

> Lana-

>

> One way to save time is to make really huge batches of food and

> freeze individual portions. I'll make a few gallons of chili or stew

> or soup and then pour most of it into pint-sized ball jars,

> vacuum-seal them and stick them in my freezer. A separate freezer,

> of course, is a great investment for this purpose, and a vacuum

> sealer can help a lot too.

>

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>

[Guest guest]

Lana-

>This is a trick I learned from a man named Charlie over on

>PicklinNPreserving or FoodDrying, I don't remember which (maybe

>both!).

>

>Take regular canning jars, twist tight and back off a small bit.

>Place in a regular food saver canister and vac. When you release the

>vac from the canister, you'll hear a little ping and the canning jar

>will be sealed using its own lid. Make sure you leave enough space at

>the top or it won't work.

Wow, this is SO unnecessary! It's a neat hack, but Tilia makes a

little plastic widget which fits over a canning jar with only the

flat insert part of the lid on and vacuum-seals them. When the

machine is finished, you remove the plastic widget and you can screw

on the rest of the canning jar lid if you'd like to help keep the

flat part in place, though it's not entirely necessary.

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[Guest guest]

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>I want a foodsaver system/vacuum sealer. I'd love to vacuum-seal ball

>jars and the freezer bags I suppose would be useful as well, but I

>find the whole thing very confounding, meaning, since I've never seen

>one, much less seen one in use, I have no idea of what I'm looking

>at/for nor how it works and egad, my poor head aches with incomprehension.

>

>Will you--or somebody--please hold my hand and tell me exactly what I

>need to purchase to set myself up? I saw the links to the lids

>earlier, but do i need one? or ten? or more? and/or some other

>contraption to activate them?

>

>If I buy this:

>

>http://tinyurl.com/8mehs

>

>will I have what I need to get started? Or do I need to accessorize?

>tia,

I'm really not sure which one to recommend you buy. Tilia has a

comparison chart

<http://foodsaver.jardendirect.com/comparisonChart.ad2> but it

apparently hasn't been updated in years! And the 2490, which Costco

sells, may or may not be just like the 2440, which Tilia sells here:

<http://foodsaver.jardendirect.com/products.ad2?ProductID=2596 & CatalogID=1000>

They appear to be essentially the same, and it does look like a very

nice unit, so I guess you could call Tilia and ask whether there are

any differences. There's not much of a savings, though. Costco's

selling it for $125 and Tilia's price is $130.

At any rate, you'll absolutely need an accessory if you want to

vacuum-seal anything in mason jars. There's an attachment that lets

you seal wide-mouth

<http://foodsaver.jardendirect.com/products.ad2?ProductID=1095 & CatalogID=1004>

jars and a different one for narrow-mouth

<http://foodsaver.jardendirect.com/products.ad2?ProductID=1096 & CatalogID=1004>

jars. You only need one to vacuum seal as many of the appropriate

mouth-size jar as you'd like.

The mason jar sealers are completely different from the universal

lids

<http://foodsaver.jardendirect.com/products.ad2?ProductID=1097 & CatalogID=1004>

which would be tremendously inefficient for mass-storage, as you need

one per jar or bottle you want to seal. They're expensive, they

don't work well in my experience and they also stick out way past the

edges of the container, so you can't even pack a lot of stuff in

closely together.

Tilia also has a nifty little bottle stopper for wine bottles here:

<http://foodsaver.jardendirect.com/products.ad2?ProductID=1098 & CatalogID=1004>

With these you need a stopper for every bottle you want to keep

vacuum sealed after opening, but it's not likely that you'll have

that many open bottles of wine at once, so it works out fine.

I have the Pro II, which has since been replaced by the Pro III,

though I can't tell what the differences are, but they appear to have

added a bunch of features to the cheaper lines which haven't made it

into the Pro line yet, so unless there's some limitation on how much

you can seal at once without burning out the motor in the Costco

model -- and unless that limit would affect you -- I'd say go for

it. It looks very nice.

As to usage, it's pretty straightforward. There's an accessory hose

which plugs into the base unit. You plug the other end of the hose

into the mason jar sealer and fit the sealer over a mason jar with

the flat part of the lid lying on top, and then you hit the seal

button. The machine sucks most of the air out of the jar, and after

it finishes, you remove the mason jar sealer from the jar, screw on

the screw-on part of the jar lid and you're done. I have dozens upon

dozens of sealed jars of stock, soup and stew in my freezer, and the

food really does keep better if vacuum-sealed. Using the machine is

a little more involved if you want to seal something in plastic, but

it should come with some pretty good instructions.

Hope this helps.

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