With our brand new Foodsaver, and our plans to buy bulk food, and freeze it, or make larger batches, and freeze those, we obviously need lots of bags. But Foodsaver bags can be expensive. It doesn’t make much sense to buy foods in bulk if the cost of storing the food is nearly as high or even higher than buying smaller amounts fresh. The 11 inch by 18 foot rolls are good, because they can be used for a lot of different things. But they cost around $20 for a couple 18 foot rolls. That works out to over 50 cent per foot of bag material. So if you buy stuff in bulk, and use 4 feet of bags, you better have saved over $2 on your purchase.
eBay is a great source to buy Foodsaver bags. I was our shopping for rolls of bags, looking primarily at auctions with 6-8 rolls. I wanter to buy a larger quantity, otherwise you can get killed on shipping. One auction I came upon was actually selling Black & Decker rolls of bags. They were 11×18 the same as the Foodsaver bags. I ended up getting a great price, and after shipping the cost of the bags was around 25 cents per foot.
Last night, I bought about 21 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breast on sale for $1.79 a pound! Much cheaper the the $3.69/lb price of the smaller packages! We started packaging them last night. Soon we finished off the last of the roll of Foodsaver bags that came with our Foodsaver unit. We broke out the first Black & Decker roll. They were a little different. The Foodsver bag is made of two sheets of plastic, one smooth, and one textured. The Black & Decker bag has two smooth sheets of plastic, and a small amount of textured plastic between them running down each side. The smooth plastic of the Black & Decker bag seems to be just touch thinner. The Black & Decker bags also don’t have a printed on place to write like the Foodsaver bags…but then who cares as longs as I can write somewhere on the bag.
So we began sealing the chicken in the Black and Decker bags. There was no noticeble difference between sealing in one brand, versus the other brand. So far so good. We will have to see how they hold up in the freezer. I don’t think that will be an issue. Another thing to keep an eye on is how they do when reheating food in boiling water.
So if you want to save a little bit of money on the bags for your Foodsaver, check eBay, and also keep an eye out for Black & Decker brand bags as an alternative choice.

Posted by Rob in Reviews on March 2nd, 2007 |