Using Vacuum Bags for Food & Camping
- 1). Purchase pint- and quart-sized vacuum bags at the grocery store or the store at which you purchased your vacuum sealer. If you are more experienced with vacuum sealing, you can purchase rolls of plastic with which to create your own custom-sized vacuum bags.
- 2). Group similar non-food camp items together. For instance, place matches with fire starters and maps with trail information. Continue to make small groups of like items, with two to three items in a group, to prepare to vacuum-seal the items.
- 3). Place each group of items in the center of a vacuum-packing bag and lay the bag flat on the table. Leave a few inches' worth of space around the contents of the bag so there's plenty of room for the bag to seal.
- 4). Feed one bag at a time into the vacuum sealer. The vacuum sealer forces the air out of the bag, while sealing it shut around the items inside.
- 5). Label each non-food bag with the marker and store it in the proper container for your camping trip.
- 6). Pack food items individually or per serving. Pack one steak in a bag rather than a few. Pack one serving of rice in another bag. This ensures your individual items will be properly vacuum-packed and that you won't have to measure food into serving sizes while you're camping.
- 7). Feed each food bag into the vacuum sealer, one at a time. Label the bags with a marker, writing serving sizes as well so whoever does the cooking knows, for instance, that a bag contains 1/2 cup of dry rice. Doing this eliminates questions and ruined recipes.
- 8). Store perishable food items in a camp cooler with ice. Although the vacuum-packing protects the food from the elements, the food still requires the proper temperature to stay fresh.
Source...