Customer Reviews

Tilia FoodSaver Vac 550 Kit Vacuum Sealing System

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I bought this product 2 months ago and now have a freezer full of frozen meals just waiting to be popped into boiling water. As a single person who likes to cook I found this product especially helpful since you don't necessarily want to cook up a pot of chili or stew or something and have to eat it every day for the next week to keep it from going bad. I just pop it in the bags and freeze it where it keeps for months. Also very helpful for things like cheese which we all know does not have the refrigerator life we'd like it to have. While the bags and rolls are expensive, if you think before you seal you can get good repeat useage out of them. I use the rolls and if I buy beef or chicken in bulk I seal them in a bag that is bigger than the piece by about a half, when I use it I wash the bag, and keep it for the next bit of chicken and so on. And if I seal something that's not raw meat I wash it and use it for incrementally smaller things such as cold cuts then maybe cheese. That way you get alot of good uses out of one bag. You can also use the wide mouth mason jars over and over. And if you get the ones you can put in the freezer you'll have no problem.

I like this product a lot - BUT -- Here are some words of advice. The bags are very expensive. I do my best to save things in WIDE-MOUTH Mason jars to save money. There is an attachment that comes with this model which allows you to seal a WIDE-MOUTH mason jar pretty well. BUT IT DOES TAKE PRACTICE and PATIENCE! We reuse the bags as much as possible. The PRESEALED bags work best but of course are the most expensive. It seems when we buy a roll and seal them ourselves then we can never get a good seal. I am so cheap that I hessitate using the bags the way they do on the infomercial ie. taking the cheese out, cutting an ounce off and resealing it. "Ya, I saved $1.00 per pound on the cheese but it cost me almost a buck for the bag! You decide.

I picked up one of these at a local store and have overall been satisfied with it. It's particularly great for a single person like me, to buy in bulk and freeze out portions that won't go bad before I can eat them. My main issue is with using larger bags. I have a hard time getting a good seal, as it almost always wrinkles at some point, no matter how careful I am. It often takes me two or three tries to get it sealed right. Again, this is only with the really large bags that I had this problem. Smaller ones seem to work fine.

As others mention, you will get the best value and use out of this if you leave room in the bags so they can be reused. They are stiff enough to be easy to wash out so this is well worth doing.

One other comment I would have is that you are most likely to use this if you have counter space for it. I have to keep it in a cabinet and often find I don't want to go to the trouble of dragging it out to use it. So I often don't seal stuff that I could unless I have a number of items to do.

I love this product. I bought it a year ago from an infomercial when it was known as Compact II. First off, I know I have already saved money using it. It is easy to use and convenient. I had another product like this years ago, but it was big and heavy and took up too much room on my counter. Not so with this item, it is small enough so you can leave it right out on your counter, which I recommend - when appliances have to be stored, you tend to use them less. And you will want to leave it out, because once you start using it, you'll wonder how you ever got along without it! I leave it on the counter between my stove and refrigerator and it gets used constantly, whether it be leftover meat, sauces, vegetables, or whatever. I just bag the leftovers and freeze them. You can also write on the bags what you are storing and the date. It keeps food so fresh, when you take that piece of frozen chicken out of your freezer 3 - 4 months later, you'll swear you just bought it! It's great for any type of food. I do recommend however, like they say in the brochure, that you do freeze your liquids first in a container, pop them out and them vacuum save them in a bag, it's less messy that way. The bags are economical also, I reuse them if I have just frozen something in them, of course you can't if you have cooked in them! But you can cook in them, just pop them in boiling water! I really recommend this product to anyone, especially if you buy your meat in bulk or you have a large vegetable garden. You can freeze any size quantity you want. I could go on and on, but really, if you have considered this item in the past, buy it! The money you save in the first year of using this will more than pay for the price of this product! It also makes a great gift!

I saw this on a commercial months ago, but hesitated to buy it because of some bad reviews here. My husband got it for my birthday a few weeks ago. I have (1) sealed cuts of meat without freezing them and it worked just fine, (2) marinated chicken in sealed bags (make sure there is a few extra inches at the top) and it was GREAT!! (3)sealed half a leftover bundt cake without problems. This will always sit on the counter. It's so easy to use that my kids seal the food half the time. I agree, tho, on the cost of the bag material. Hint: forget about buying bags. It's really easy to make your own from the rolls. I love this machine!!!!

I had seen the infomercials and whatnot. Seemed like a good idea but the cost sealing media turned me off. Then I had a bountiful year of deer hunting and looked at the freezer bag packed freezer burnt remains from last years harvest and realized I needed to do something different. So I went ahead and sprung for the Vacsealer.

The postive side is that it is small and easy to use. It sucks most of the air out and really seems to be working. I did some comparisons where I stuck some meat in a regular freezer bag vs the vacsealer. The regularly packaged stuff is starting to go and the vacsealer packed stuff is still doing fine. I'm foraying into stews, roasts and other freezable items that I can cook in batch quantities. So far so good.

What I have learned
-I use the pre-cut bags. I get about 3 uses of out them before something takes them out (moldy growth because I didn't wash them, over microwaving them, too small to reseal). I tried the rolls but discovered I ended up creating bags the same length of the pre-cut ones. Trying to get the bottom cut even to not "waste" bag material is frustrating. If you just accept the fact that a bag will last about 3 uses and quit trying to squeeze that 4th or 5th use out of it you will be much happier with the product.
-I loose about 2 inches of bag per use. When you have a fresh bag you can seal it about an inch or less from the top. Re-used bags don't reseal as easily and it seems the solution is to always leave more space from the top.
-Food arrangement in the bag will affect performance. Sometimes I get air pockets if I don't arrange the food so. Try to leave space around all the edges and no pockets in the food.
-The seal is not always perfect. I've had a few leaky seals that I had to recut and reseal.
-Some people have complained you have to pre-freeze soup or liquids and then seal them. I've done just fine freezing them right out of the pot.

Since a bag costs around 50 cents it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to go through the trouble of freezing a $1 worth of bread or vegetables and storing them in order save them. I use it to store single use portions of meats and cooked meals for convinence. Well worth it for that.

If your thinking about it for meats or serving sized frozen cooking go for it. This really works, its worth it. Ditto if you want to do some LONG (years) term storage of Bulk grains or flour. If your just looking to make your lettuce last another week or your rice for month (or anything you use on a regular basis) its probably easier to replace what goes bad.

I purchased my Tilia Foodsaver Vac 550 from an infomercial on TV. I can, without a doubt tell you it does everything it says and then some. It is quick, easy to operate and has earned a space on my countertop. It is perfect for single people or families. I buy in bulk, then portion it up and vacuum seal it for the freezer. You won't be disappointed if you buy this machine. It pays for itself!!

Bought the Tilia foodsaver from an infomercial. It does everything they said it would do. We use it mostly to seal mason jars filled with salad, soup, vegetables, etc. All the food that used to go bad quickly (strawberries, mushrooms, lettuce) now has a reasonable shelf life in the refrig. A cut up a head of lettuce will stay fresh in a sealed mason jar for over a week. The bags seal tight as well, and stay sealed.

As for quality, we've had it over a year, we use it every day, and it still works like new. Just can't praise this product enough.

I took a long time deciding to buy this. I'm an empty-nester, it's just me, and I wanted to be able to still buy things in bulk at reasonable prices. I also hated throwing out fresh produce because I just couldn't eat it all, and I didn't have time to constantly go shopping for more. A girlfriend told me I would love this. I DO! Most of my stuff goes into wide-mouth Mason jars that can be used over and over. The bags are great, too, and I can buy value packs of meat and cheese for half the price of one or two pieces! My refrigerator looks so cheery with see-through jars filled with stuff that doesn't go bad! I had cherries in jars for 4 weeks, and the last batch STILL tasted great! Strawberries? Two weeks before I finished them off - still crisp and flavorful, and NO FUZZ! Now my sisters and friends that have seen mine are talking about getting the VAC 550 for themselves!

My wife and I were excited after seeing the ads on TV, but after seeing the video that came with the FoodSaver 550, we realized that the vacuum sealing is much more involved than the commercials lead you to believe (duh).

For starters:

--Vegetables need to be blanched (boiled) before you seal them.
--Sealing fresh meat is also problematic, given that the juices are sucked into the pump (the video suggests adding paper towels to the bags with meat to keep the juices from running into the pump).
--Bread and meat should be frozen before being vacuum sealed.
--The unit requires significant counterspace.
--vacuum sealing stuff takes time, it's sooo much easier just to grab a ziplock.

All that said, I will admit I had fun vacuum-sealing stuff in our fridge (whether it needed it or not). If you are thrifty and very frugal, you will enjoy this -- otherwise, I would consider the rational alternative: buying smaller portions.