Vacuum Sealing Glass Jars & More

My Next Step in Preserving Food

Oh goody! This morning, I get to start the day by writing about one of my favorite topics, self-reliance.

This will be a short post, more of an update. Recently, I wrote about vacuum-sealing machines and devices that are designed to suck the air out of a bag, sealing the food inside the bag so effectively that it would last much longer in the freezer.

There’s nothing I hate more than having to throw good food out.

Yesterday, I had to dispose of a bag of frozen chicken breasts that appeared to be freezer burned and so to be on the safe side I tossed them. Gosh, that hurt!

We are a family of two old people.

I buy food in bulk and then divide into smaller portions and freeze. Although I am committed to keeping my freezer and pantries full of food, preserving food can be a challenge.

I’m always looking for ways to simplify the process.

I’m not terribly interested in canning food, although I would do it if need be, but I freeze food regularly. I have a small chest freezer that I keep full. I also have a battery power station that I can use if there’s an outage in my region so as not too loose the food that I have in my freezers. Yet, with all my careful planning, I still ended up throwing out some food yesterday.

That brings me to the highlight of my story at last.

Today I will make homemade chicken noodle soup, a big kettle of it. Then, after it cools, I’ll divide it into 16-ounce portions that will be poured into none other than Ball mason jars. Yep! Good old Ball jars.

They’ve been around for a long time.

What I like the most is that I can wash and reuse them unlike plastic bags. I will seal the jars of soup with my new little vacuum sealer hand pump which I purchased on sale for very little money the other day. I have a houseguest coming tomorrow, all the way from California, and soup will be on the menu occasionally for the next two weeks.

As I’ve often stated, I am a champion of the one-pot meal.

Today’s little adventure is an experiment. However, if this works as promised, I should be able to keep the soup in the refrigerator for over a week before using it. We’ll probably eat it up much faster than that, but as I said this is just an experiment.

If I want to keep the soup longer, apparently, I can freeze the soup in the jar and then vacuum seal it.

Now that’s something I really didn’t know until I researched it. You can freeze a glass mason jar. Vacuum sealed food stays well preserved and full of flavor much longer. Which means I could keep jars of soup for a year or more according to what I’ve read.

Which brings me back to my chicken breasts.

I’ve decided that I will purchase a vacuum sealer for plastic bags as well. Even though I will occasionally need to toss a bag in the trash because they can only be used a limited number of times. The process would preserve my chicken breasts for much, much longer without resulting in freezer burn.

It’s a journey as they say.

We live in a very dependent day and age. We are given access to almost everything we need through the almighty dollar. Gone are the old-fashioned-self-reliant days of yore. Thrift has been replaced with spendthrift and debt. Waste is a sign of success and status.

Yet, that kind of dependence makes me feel vulnerable.

So, I’m on a learning curve. Expanding my skill set has been fun. I’ll keep you posted. I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who have had a lot more experience with vacuum sealing jars and bags of food.

If so, feel free to share your expertise. Until next time …

Teresa is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.