Using Regular Bags With Your Vacuum Sealer? 

I use regular ziplock baggies and cut off the zipper seal and then seal away. I do not use the straw. It vacuums and seals very well.

I use regular ziplock bags and zip almost closed and insert a straw. Take a deep breath and suck all the air out. Repeat as needed. It usually takes me 2 times to get it vacuum sealed. Remove straw and zip closed. It works beautifully.

This is fantastic to know because for my "everyday in the fridge sealing needs" on items that that I want to just prolong the life of its will do this, and then save the regular foodsaver bags for all the items that go into the deep freeze. This will save a ton of money for me

I've used a Vacuum Sealer for many years....don't think I could have run my household without one. The money saved sure is worth the cost of the sealer! I make the bags longer than they need to be so I can cut an inch off and have enough bag left over to re- seal it. The bags are also easy to wash and reuse, I've always done that because the bags can get really expensive if they are only used once. I turn them inside out and wash with very very hot soapy water. The bags can be used in boiling water to reheat food, they can also be scalded and sterilized that way too.

The freezer bags are a thicker plastic than the regular bags so I bought 3 boxes of the freezer bags with the zipper on the top.Not realizing the zipper had too thick of tracks to seal properly. So I bought the correct style (just plain ziplock freezer bags) and have been Using the method that was posted on RU-vid by “Homestead Corner “ titled “How I Vacuum Seal Without Vacuum Sealer Bags”. Loved the results from her method. Your video about using a straw is gonna help me using those zipper bags. I’ll cut the zipper and tracks off at the top then use the straw to help in the sealing process. I’m so thankful for your video!!! Now those bags can get used right away Thank you so much for your postering !!!.

I've got another for you especially during 'butchering season'... I've been using the same Food Saver for 15 years. The method that took years to discover happened like most things: by accident. I caught much more fish than expected and therefore, much more moisture in the Food Saver. My rubber gaskets (surrounding the well) we're getting soaked and as they got more and more wet, I noticed they sealed better and better. Now, I wet the gaskets after doing a large shopping, in preparation of packing portion sizes for my family and it works incredibly well.. I reuse bags, I use store bought zip type bags and those bags used in cereal boxes also work well.

Oh try my families replacement for traditional grilled cheese rye toast, buttered, thin slices of extra sharp cheddar cheese pieces over to cover each toast then thin slices of fresh ripe tomato salt and pepper, place each completed embellished toast under the broiler until cheese is melted and tomato is cooked

I use ziploc-type bags (the thicker kind sold by Maxi's president's choice) and make seals on them and turn them into 3 tubes. You need to make 4 seals to be able to cut between them and separate the tubes. Fill with apple sauce (or any fruit puree), close using the ziploc closure and it makes nice mini-freezies for my grand-kids. Just snip off the closure when ready to eat it so they can push it up in the tube.

So I have had the Anova for a couple of months ru-vid.comUgkxK2YRU9uBOXzuIEV660Qo3sX7dJDJLg72 and I've made steaks about 7 times, chicken 3 times, brats once... I'd say every time the food has been cooked perfectly. I start with hot water out of the sink so I have not timed how long it would take to get to temp from say 'room temp', but so far the Anova for the price has done an amazing job.The recipes and app are very straight forward, most of the recipes are from what people post so it's hard to tell if this is the ultimate guide for cooking everything but nothing I've made has turned out bad.. I even went mid-well on some smaller steaks because I didn't know if my neighbors like mid-rare and it turned out fantastic.I will say I will have to tweak recipes though to my liking.. either way the Sous-Vide is a success for making food taste great, safely cooked and keeping things moist, that in itself is worth it. I'd like to see how Hamburgers would turn out.

I wash out the 1 Litre milk bags and use those in my vaccum sealer. The milk bags are thicker than most and fit the perfect amount of veggies for a family meal. I often blanch my own and freeze them. They fit enough ground hamburger for a dinner, I even get chicken drumsticks alternated in rows there, a couple large pork chops, 4 portion sizes of steak. I save left overs like pasta sauce so it does not stain a tupperware. I re-use them until they are too small to do so, or they had raw chicken defrosted in them, I never chance it with that. I bake my own bread and save my own dough this way. Use the outter bag that holds the 3-1L bags together, as the outer bag to further freezer burn protect in categories whatever it is you are saving. I use the milk bag tab and write in permanent marker whatever is in the larger bag grouping. I use red tabs for anything beef, because it is red meat. So much easier to keep the freezer organized for nearly free. And I have never had to buy commercial freezer bags, which do nothing for freezer burn protection. My fresh baked bread in a whole loaf has not once come out freezer burnt, just as fluffy as the day it was baked. Hope that tip saves someone else some bags and freezer burnt food.

You can also reseal any bag that was heat sealed: Cereal, powdered sugar, brown sugar, chips, snip off a corner, pour and reseal.

think it's more effective to discard the smooth piece of the sealer bag strip so the embossed piece of strip is utilised fully. Plus I did hear to keep the embossed side on the underside of bag in machine for better sealing.

I use canning jars with the metal sealing lids. I have a "jar sealer" thing that connects via a tube to a port in my vacuum sealer and all the air out of the jar. Then I screw on the metal band and that's it! It's reusable and re-sealable and economical. I've used pint jars and quart jars.

My vacuum sealer will even reseal some potato chip bags too. just don't suck all air out so you don't crush your chips.

I figured it would have melted the thin bag into. Gonna try your suggestion. Had watched Shotgun Red's RU-vid channel on vacuum sealing -- his favorite machine vs Food Saver. I don't have $500+ for his favorite sealer. Thanks for the tips.

I like watching you experiment with things. Thanks for sharing that. Love you!!

Good idea and a real cost saver. The saver bags are too expensive at about 800% over regular bags. This cost difference is not justifiable. Kinda like printers and ink.

Excellently produced video. Straight to the point and well explained. Should save me a shed load of cash. Thanks.

Maybe with the second try and cut the strip of plastic so both ends are open, not sure but worth a go. Great video, precise and you didn't take ages to show us. I'm a fan for sure! Diana NZ

Now that's a TIP! The only way to find out if it works is to "try it out"! You have nothing to loose if you try it out first before you take the big dive! Put a piece of meat in the thicker bag seal it up and then after a period of time open it up and see how it worked. I'd hate to see you do all of your meat and having it not work so well. However, seeing you go for the gold in trying is what creativity and imagination is all about. There's always wonderment in what can be if you take a step in and out of the box. That's what learning by doing is all about. Great job once again! I loved watching your make a difference by proving your "point". Don't you just love it when a "plan comes together"!

Have you ever made homemade saurkraut an vaccum packed it.It is a super way of preserving many meals on a shelf without refrigeration

I reuse all my bags from chips and cereals as on the go sized snack bags. Portion control and multiple use before disposal.

Both of thosde worked because you made a channel so that the sealer could remove the air. Food saver bags have small channels in them to remove the air. Wow...learned a lot from this and all of your videos.

I love your attitude towards learning and trying new things. Well done.

Another method, take your textured bag, and cut lengths, and roll them into straws (they only need to be about an inch wide) and use this in place of the straw. Gives a good seal without the sharp edge of a hard plastic straw, (You just need a way to channel the air out)

Will you please update in a few months on how those bags did? It would be nice to compare them to see if they fail after awhile or if they are more permeable and absorb air somehow. What a cool idea!

My experience has shown that these methods are temporary.:( All of my experiments have failed within days to weeks. Works good if you just want a seal for a few days in the fridge. Thanks, Bev!

You want to be careful when you use the cheaper bags for the some products like sharp edges like bones and etc. Plus when you use to freeze due to the thinness and getting freezer burnt.

This method might be ok for the fridge but the thinner bags won't have any lengthy protection in a freezer. There is a thickness difference even with the Zip Lock bags, the ones that say food storage as opposed to freezer are thinner. I came across a pistol/gun type food sealer system made by Pro Waring, it comes with a dz 1 gal bags and 1 dz qt size. It probably the best 40.00 I've ever spent. There is a round rubber gasket on the bag and you put the end of the pistol tip sealer over it and pull the trigger, it then sucks all the air out. It also has a zipper type seal that you run your finger along first. The bags can boiled, or microwaved to cook the food in them although I never do. They are made to be reusable, turn inside out and wash in the dishwasher(no dry cycle)or as I do in bleached cleaned dishpan, then in hot water only with dish soap and a sprinkle of dishwasher powder. The powder type has bleach in it and enzymes, where as liquid/gels can only contain one or the other because bleach kills the enzymes. That's why I always use powder for sanitary of bleach and enzymes to help eat away at proteins & solids. Btw Cusinart makes the same hand held pistol type, likely the same manufacturer. I've used for over a year and the bags hold up great, so you don't have to keep buy rolls.

I've tried, several methods, several brands of bags. It works initially, but in time most loose the vaccume seal. Not worth the aggravation.

I’m in Australia 🇦🇺 and on eBay I bought ten rolls for $30. Thunk-ya.

Lol never heard anyone else say “thunk” Thanks for the tips. I subscribed.

Thank you!!! Your video a lifesaver :) Bought sealer with zero knowledge and plastic reseal without the embossed

You can also take ziploc bags and cut the zipper part off and slide it down the side and seal the bag that way too. That is what I do. Don't have to put it by the food

you could use a little heat on the end of the straw going in the bag and flatten it some to minimalize the chance of a tearout

It was very honest of you to mention that you picked up these ideas elsewhere, so many RU-vidrs don't do this. I was looking into this further and it is suggested that you might not want to use this for storing foods long term as the plastic is not as oxygen inpeneratable as the proper foodsaver quality and therefore food doesn't last as long but it is perfectly adequate for shorter term storage.

I don't use straws and was use about to donate this one pack I have. Grabbing them out of the box. THanks.

If you’re concerned about the straw piercing the bag, wrap the end with a little piece of paper towel.

I love you lady! Miigwetch for the awesome personality and video!

•I have found the issue with sealing non-standard vacuum bags to be the balance of melting the air channel without cutting through the bag. The solution I have found that works consistently better is to use a strip of material from a $.99 plastic shower loofa. It easily provides enough air flow and melts easily. It works every time on the flimsiest bags.

I use the second method you used except I only use the textured part. if I remember correctly I have it extend very minutely when sealing and it seals great. sometimes I put sealed product in an additional freezer bag of appropriate size for freezer storage. extra protection and you can reuse since no food touches.

I always wondered why this didn't work! Thank you!!

Works really well.just did the straw method using inexpensive storage bags from Co-Op. similar to the bags you are using.

Great tip for saving money, especially if I'm sealing things for short term in the fridge. Thank you!

We haven't paid for the FoodSaver bags since our initial purchase of our first unit. We save all our Canadian Tire money over the year and then when CT gets them puts them on sale during canning season we use CT money to purchase them. (for non Canadians...Canadian Tire issues redeemable store "coupon" script on every purchase you make. It's a % of your purchase cost. You can collect it as paper "bills" or electronically and redeem it whenever you want on purchases).

I am encited to try this. Those bags from Food Saver are so expensive. Using a less expensive bag for more everyday items would sure help my budget. Thanks for showing how to do it!

Bev, I also heard that you can go to the hardware store and get a sheet of CLEAR plastic like a PVC drop-cloth and make bags out of that also. I would think you would want to have another plastic bag inside of it that is food- safe, though.

It looks like an off a lot of bag for the size of those cheese slices, madam. You could actually use your machine to cut the bag in half, so that you get two Bags instead of one. The one with the textured piece of plastic look like it’s sealed just fine. After all, there’s no air leaking back into it. It’s just holding the way it was when it came off the machine. Although it’s totally possible that I missed something, it looks like that all the air was vacuumed out of the bag before it was sealed.

I used regular freezer bags for meat and squeezed the air out and filled a gallon bag with the meat and then sealed it up. That way I can open up bag and take out what I need and reseal the gallon bag.

The real question is how long do the bags hold the seal? Saving a couple of bucks in the short term may be great. But if you are doing it for long term emergency food storage then you may find out that you are going to go very hungry when you open the 5 gallon bucket and all the food in the bags is spoiled. Not sure if i would want to take that risk.

Such a nice grandma

Well I haven't read all of the comments but, here's my take on bag #2. If you would have put the cut-off strip to the side of the cheese instead of on it, maybe it would have sealed better?? I dunno, I don't have a sealer YET, I'm going thru videos and reviews to check a number of them out and came across yours for the sealing of other bags instead of the vacuum seal bags. gotta safe $$$ somewhere. Thanks.

Another thing that I do is when I use my bags, I wash it out and reused for something else. I have been known to use one four times with different stuff and spinach being the last or chopped mushroom for the last seal as I don't need a lot of that stuff for my recipes. So I seal my bags as high up as I can each time so I can reuse them.

Thank you so much for this info. It worked perfectly with my bennet read and generic bags

What’s the purpose of the straw( very new to food sealing)

We use our sealer all the time. This is great, thanks for the tip.

I have tried these methods with regular ziplock freezer bags. I'm telling you right now this will not work for a long term. Yes, they do pull down and seal, but very soon after they start to leak off. I don't think it's worth the aggravation and the little bit of money you save by doing this hack. The regular vacuum bags and rolls of vacuum bag material that they sell is designed for vacuum sealing and heavier gauged than even the Ziploc freezer bags that you buy. I think the way you can save money is to reuse especially designed vacuum bags like a few people have suggested.

Well that surprised me! When you said the question, I said no. Lol, boy was I wrong. Thanks for sharing.

When using the old seal bag strips it works better without the slick section and it works better cutting the strips top to bottom instead of across. Then trim after sealing and doing the second safety seal.

You have to have the plastic below the line that will heat seal. It will draw out the air and you can heat seal again just like you did with the straw. Try it again. It works I have done it.

Hey girl! Long time lol I'm playing catch up now that Andy is finally feeling better lol I have a tip for you! When using the strip off of a sealer bag, cut 3 strips about half as wide as the one you used. Put one over the cheese as you have it and put one on each side if the cheese. A few seconds more work but it will allow your sealer to vacuum all of the air out and it will be as tight as a normal sealer bag. The reason is that when you only use 1 strip on top as soon as it runs out of air to pull from the food it stops pulling. But the sides still had air in them that hadn't been extracted yet. So if you use 3 thin strips you will get a much better deal all the way around. Hope that helps! Oh and you can do the same with plain ziplock style freezer bags which are thicker bags and will protect better, just cut the zipper part off. Good to see you again! Much love hun

Wow! Nice to see another way. Cool, i saw one last wk can't recall who, but he used ziploc bags cut the tops put the cuts aside to use later to do a similar technique.

I do that with cheap freezer bags for better protection and I use 2 or 3 those cocktail straws to spread the suction..

Nice tips, I have a vacumm sealer and the bags you need to get for them can be expensive so this is also a great money saving tip. Thank you Mamma!

Hmmm 🤔 The one that vacuumed better had the straw tucked down the side, and the one that did not vacuum as well, had the bag pieces on top of the cheese... I wonder if positioning had something to do with it -- the bag pieces got squashed, but the straw not so much... I wonder if it would vacuum better if you tucked the bag pieces down the side, instead of placing them on top of the cheese???

Sweet! I had never tried that, but I know it works great on Milk Bags!

If I had known this trick when I got rid of my seal a meal vacuum sealer, I would have saved uber bucks. Tsk! Those seal a meal bags were so expensive! Nice share!

Almost 259,000 wow. Good video I haven’t tried the two ply message but with either I suggest being very quick about cutting off the excess and resealing the second time

Let us know if it holds up long term. Thanks!

Thank you very much,as in Australia the bags are far more expensive , you are saving me a fortune.

I'm getting an used vacuum sealer after using one to ship a plush toy overseas and I needed to save on shipping. Used the roll that came with the system (my friend's system), and it flattened out alarmingly. I didn't want to be shackled to the rolls (even the off branded stuff costs $$$$ - $20 + taxes for 20 feet of bag?). Now I can buy all the ziplock bags I need from the dollar store OR even splurge on the brand name stuff.

Can you use shorter straws? Hence take a regular soda straw and cut it into suitable shorter straw pieces. Straw supply lasts longer. I would try it myself but I don't have a vacuum machine,, yet

Wow, thank you!!! I am from Mexico. Muchas gracias!!

Those little stir straws for mixed drinks can be bought on line for very very little. I got 1000 for I think 6 or 7 dollars. Ziplocks at costco are also good & the zip portion can be cut off & used instead of the straw - it seals easily. I will check out the dollar store bags though as Im tired of vac seal bags not only because of their expense but the rolls require sealing both ends - too much work & $.

Thanks. Great ideas.

Well that was fun! I like your personality. Thanks for teaching me something new! pierre from New Mexico

that is a awesome tip, especially if you are in a bind and run out of the bags..... poppa you make me smile..... did he ever get his grilled cheese sandwich ....lol

Brilliant! I think I'll use the straw for normal sealing! I really liked how fast it sealed.

Suppose you take and separate the straw and cheese further apart. Seal it then reseal between the straw and the cheese

I heard one needs to consider when using clear plastic that mold grows faster in clear plastic bags when it is exposed to light.

Wow, thank you for that helpful video. Im having a hard time looking for a textured vacuum sealing bag, in some supermarkets here in Philippines, well now i know what to do. Salamat ( Thank you)

Great video. Thanks!

Great video. Regarding method 2, would it be better to have the strip cut from the "bumpy" bag go across the opening? Might be worth a try, methinks.

You are super fun to watch! Enjoyed your video

Thank you very much. Your video helped to decide whether to buy a sealer machine or not.

I did my way, instead of inserting stray etc.. I crumpled the plastic bag and it works!! you can try it also

What about using the thicker ziplock freezer bags?

I bet a plastic coffee stirrer might work as well as the straw.

You are amazing! Thank you.

There are companies that make generic bags for the vacuum sealers. Much cheaper than the brand name bags. Look for them on ebay

Try the strip method again, but position it in the same place that you positioned the straw.

Straw can be hazardous for wildlife too. Good video.

My sealer melted the plastic bag so what I had to do is add another bag to get it to work, but still two plastic bags is cheaper then the freezer sealer bags the store wants you to buy.

The one that didn't use the straw has to have the strip that you put in the bag shorter so it can be resealed above the strip like the one with the straw

I wonder if you had the fancy bag chunk wrapped around the cheese rather than just on top. I think that would work better

Cool. Bought one last year. Love it

You also have to be careful about how good your plastic bags are. Some are more porous than others, and eventually leak air into them; particularly in the freezer, where ice crystals form on the food and can puncture the plastic. Test before you DEPEND on it!

I just tried mylar bags, my food saver to suck the air out and I also put a Oxygen Absorber in it when sealing things like bags of beans, say 3-4 bags of beans from wally world into a gallon mylar bag. Then I store them in my basement.. cool, dark & into a metal cabinet until I get enough for a 5 gallon bucket. anyways, love your videos... Thanks

Thanks very much for sharing it helpa a lot

Hi there, I'm just finding out about this today, so forgive my ignorance. Could you please tell me what the straw and/or the extra piece of plastic is for when sealing the bags? I can't find any info on this on the web. Cheers x