Bought a Foodsaver Vacume Seal: Alternative Bags?

[enduro]

I just bought a Foodsaver Vacume and have noticed that the standard bags sell for about $1 each - too much for a plastic bag really.

So I'm wondering if there are good alternatives or good sheet plastic alternatives to the proprietory baggies or plastic rolls made by sunbeam?

I do know that most household polastic bags will seal (including hte zip seal sandwich bags) but some of my home dried products are quite sharp and puncture them easily.

What do you do or what ideas do you have?

[photohiker]

Buy the continuous roll, not the bags. You get to make whatever size you actually need and less waste.

Note that the air evacuation system needs the foodsaver type bags - it doesn't work too well with ordinary plastic bags, but it will seal them fine if thats all you need.

I've seen alternative bags on ebay but have not tried them yet.

[GaNTer]

continuous roll is my advice too..

much more usable than the plastic bags..

[scubabob]

what are these things like? and do you use it often as opposed to the dehydrator?

[melot]

Yes, I, agree -use the continuous roll... you can make quite tiny bags with it. I usually dehydrate & vacuum seal my meals and extra veges separately and find the continuous roll allows me to seal the veges in flat bags that are only about 3cm deep. The Sunbeam rolls make tough bags that withstand lots of squashing down into packs and also seem to prolong the life of the dehydrated food, particularly in humid climates like Qld.