Food for thought and the road.

We've done it for up to three months, the biggest worry is that any bones will poke holes in the bag when travelling. We usually place a piece of paper towel around the bony bits to stop it before cryovacing. Also place the cryovaced meat in an ice cream container in the bottom of the fridge to stop them being squashed/roughed up as well.

When camping before the luxury of a caravan with refrigerator, we used to have a treat of steak (I don't do roasts where touring) soon after shopping, and moved to non refrigerated foods when days away from shops. I have not used a vacuum sealer, but on some trips I do what you did and run an Engel as a freezer.

I like your idea of "as long as it takes". When we headed out onto the Gibb River Road, I told our children I didn't know if we would be days, weeks or months, but they would hear from me when we reached Wyndham. The youngest asked how long she should wait before calling the police. I assured her there would be plenty of traffic on the GRR. We were little more than three weeks, but could have spent longer. We were nine weeks including the time spend in Kununurra and surrounds including Purnululu, but that included some R & R and visiting friends.

Motherhen

We vacuum pack our red meat and have kept it at below 4°c for up to 8 weeks.
We do not vacuum chicken as with a keeping life of 1 week it seems not worth the trouble.
We remove all fat and bone before vacuuming. Apart from the possibility of bone puncturing the pack, it simply takes up fridge room only to be discarded at meal time.
We tried vacuuming some vegetables after blanching but it was less than acceptable.
We do not use cheap vacuum bags as they can be unreliable and therefore a waste of our time, money and contents.

Thanks for the input guys. Never having tried this cryovacing caper before, the thing that made me have second thoughts was that as good as your preparation is how do you know whether you have properly "vacuumed" and sealed the bags?
As scott said double bag and Peter's comment to not have sharp bones or edges to puncture.
All good thoughts but even then there doesn't appear to be any other way than to be as careful as possible and if in doubt throw it out.
Maybe the best idea as MH suggested, eat it before it has a chance to take on a life of it's own and then into the baked beans and toast (;-))

Cheers
Pop

Hi Pop,
We have used a cryovac machine for the last three years and as said above use any white meat early, a week or so. We have used red meat cryovaced up to six weeks old and it was still as fresh as it was put in there.
Another benefit of the cryovac is that at meal time you can decide what to eat and you don't have the hassle of thawing out something you may not feel like twelve hours latter.
Cheers
Graham

Hi,

Oh the wonderful anticipation of a trip!

As already said, cryovac chicken is only ok for about a week. We get the butcher to cryovac red meat in portions enough for one meal. The cost is about the same as doing it yourself and saves time! Large pieces of meat keep better than diced or minced so if taking beef for a casserole, take it in one chunk and dice it yourself before cooking. Wash the filled bags when you pick them up (so there is no blood residue on the outside, which will gradually begin to smell) and pack them in a plastic container in the bottom of the fridge. We too have kept meat for 3 months. We use our own cryovac machine to vacuum ham, salami, cheese etc. from the deli and our own rissoles etc. - it works beautifully, keeps for weeks and we have rarely had a pack lose its vacuum. Just make sure the packing process is as hygienic as possible and if possible store in a plastic box to prevent punctures.

Last year we took the machine and a few bags with us to the Kimberley and it came in handy to store excess meat as sometimes you can only purchase it in large packs. Most machines don't draw much power and it runs off our 300w inverter.

Happy planning!

Hi all,

Further on cryovacing.
Marinade your steak, chicken or whatever before your cryovac. it will not only taste fantastic and be very tender, it will last a lot longer.
For preference try and get dry marinades - try your friendly butcher they buy it in 10 and 20 litre drums.

cheers

For Beef, we use Rump. No bones and versatile - You can grill it for Steak, you can stew or braise it and you can finely cut into strips for Stir fry. Its also probably the cheapest cut of the "steaks" so very versatile