Food Vacuum sealing results

[SquonkHunter]

Yesterday I opened a one gallon jar of vacuum sealed Basmati rice I had packed in 2006. The seal was still good, a little too good in fact. Had a devil of a time getting the lid to unseal. After that was done, the rice was found to be in the same condition as when originally packed in 2006. Added some to a batch of homemade soup and the results were very good. No noticeable loss in quality at all.

 

[ReneeT]

Must have been the year Older grandson wanted 'the kind of macaroni that snaps on your tongue' for the mac and cheese I made for lunch last Wednesday. We went through the 7 different kinds of pasta in the current use pantry, then I took him downstairs to what I think of as the short term pantry (year or so) and started going through an assortment of boxes of half gallon jars of vac sealed pasta until he pointed to a jar of shell macaroni (yes, I spoil my boys ) I pulled the jar out and saw that it was dated 2006. LOUD pop when that lid came off!! No oxy obsorber; just vac sealing with a Food Saver. No observable change in taste, texture, or length of time to cook. Guess I don't need to rotate those jars after all - unless I rotate them IN to the long term pantry, that is!

I like to use half gallon canning jars to vac seal dry goods. They are an easy size for me to handle, take the same wide mouth size lids/bands as my some of my other canning jars, the contents don't go stale before I can use them up, the jars fit well on my kitchen cabinet shelves which means I don't have to decant the contents into other containers for day to day use, and - if worse comes to worst, I'll have them on hand to can juices in if I need to, to spare my smaller jars for things that shouldn't be canned in half gallons. Oh - they also make good fermentation containers for small batches of wine!