Solving Common Problems with the Jar Sealer

[Music] hello friends heidi here from rain country god is good all the time and i'm here for another frequently asked question and again it has to do with the foodsaver tops these little things right here in particular the regular mouth a lot of people have been having issues with the regular mouth not properly sealing and i'm going to explain why one of the other issues that the regular mouth vacuum sealer top has is the little blue gasket when you go to vacuum seal something in your jar and you pull this off this gasket will just kind of peel out a lot of times some there is a certain trick that you can do it just a certain way and it will stay in but as easy as it is for it to pop back in it's really not that big a deal you just want to make sure that when you put it back into place that you put it in so that the opening is u-shaped right that that's facing outwards not in towards the inside of the foodsaver top but outwards towards you like this if you turn it the wrong way and then you go to use it again it's not going to work so you got to make sure you get that part right that could be one of your issues if you're not getting the gasket in right however there is an issue that has nothing to do with user error and that is it's with the top itself and i think it is related to the fact that this gasket comes out frequently it might be the same thing it seems to me that it just doesn't fit in there as tightly as the wide mouth jar one does and that could be the same reason why this one is more problematic when it comes to sealing but there are a couple of fixes to that so that you can get a good seal every single time and i'm going to be covering that before i switch to the brake bleeder pump for vacuum sealing my jars i did used to use the foodsaver machine i no longer have one i finally threw out my last one and i will not buy anymore i've been through four or five of them i've tried a few different types styles and i'm just tired of them breaking down after two years and not working at all anymore they either don't vacuum or they don't seal or both and anyway when i was using the machine for vacuum sealing the regular mouth it worked fine for the wide mouth but for the regular mouth i would probably only get a good seal like every third or fourth time and even then i found myself having to heat the lids a little bit by placing them either on top of the wood stove or a hot plate to just get a little hot not you don't want to leave it on there too long and you want it to be a low heat but just enough to to kind of soften the gummy part and that did help however it still didn't always work all the time and so what i learned and i haven't tried yet that a lot of people did if they're using the machine is to take two lids and stack them on top of each other i believe what this does is it causes a tighter fit all the way around when you go to put the top on there and then vacuum seal like you normally would and people found that when they started doing that they stopped having issues with the ceiling now some said that sometimes the second lid does also vacuum seal on top of the other one and if that happened they said they just leave it on there i'm gonna try it today just for the heck of it even though i don't really need to do this and haven't needed to but just to demonstrate that however one of the things is is when you switch to the pump which you can get on amazon for under 25 if you don't like to shop on amazon there's many other places you can find it you can go to harbor freight you can go to your local auto parts store and you should be able to find a brake bleeder kit there now keep in mind if you have the tops but you don't have the food saver hose but you're using the brake bleeder pump it already comes with a hose you do not have to purchase separately the special food saver hose that goes with the lids this will work just fine it comes with its own hose since i switched to the brake bleeder pump that's all i use i use the tip that it comes with the main difference is that you have to hold it in place since it doesn't it's not made to snap into the top of the jar sealer like the foodsaver tip does but anyway since switching to that i've had no issues unless there was something wrong with the jar such as it had a chip in it or maybe the lid itself was bent because usually i recycle previously used lids that i use for water bath canyon or pressure canning and those are the ones i usually use for vacuum sealing with and unless i run out of the used ones which i actually have in that case you want to make sure there's nothing embedded into the lid itself maybe it's bent or something that's preventing a proper seal that can happen with the wide mouth too but most likely the issue is just this and combining it with the foodsaver machine is what the problem is so let me go ahead and demonstrate even though i've done it many times let's go ahead and demonstrate both how to use the brake bleeder pump and to see how well this works okay so here's a jar of rosemary that from 2020. i haven't finished filling it up from the herbs from my garden yet and i probably won't because i think it's pretty much done now but i've already got a lid on here so it's already ready to vacuum seal but let's go ahead and put a second lid on top just to try this and see how it works so i'm gonna slip the food saver top over that i'm going to take my brake bleeder pump and just insert this tip that came with it came with the pump in there and then firmly hold in place you don't have to press really hard but you do want to firmly hold it in place and make sure you're holding it vertical straight down not at an angle like this at all you want it vertical straight down into the hole at the top of the food saver lid and then just start pumping did you hear that already as soon as i started pumping i heard a pop that's interesting now when it comes to the pressure and where the needle is at i don't even go by that anymore all i do is watch it and when and just keep pumping until i see that needle stop moving because here's the issue your brake bleeder pump could be miscalibrated maybe from use like mine is it doesn't go back to zero anymore see it stopped moving you can see here it doesn't go back to zero anymore so i just don't even go by any set number i just pump until it stops and sure enough yes both of the lids are sealed together so i wouldn't recommend trying to get that top lid off if that's the case but here's the problem with this we already have lid shortages so if you're having to rely on this method as it is now you're using twice the amount of lids to do this so for me this isn't going to be something i'm going to want to do i'm doing good on lids because i use both tattler and metal lids and i have a lot of metal lids in storage right now and let's see if we can even get this apart okay there it took a little doing but i got it apart so let me go ahead and do this again with it as is and just to show that the brake bleeder works just fine without having to use two lids and also if it if you're pumping it up and it looks like it just stops moving too soon make sure you might have let go of your uh pressing firmly you might have eased up on that not realized it so then simply press down a little bit harder and see if that needle starts moving again okay and so and see there it slipped off and there we go though it's sealed right and then i do still like to put the bands on it's not a big deal for dried goods like this all right well i hope my little demonstration and the questions i answered you'll find helpful but i want to say one more thing before i let you go i know the food saver tops are getting more and more difficult to to come across i'm not even sure if the company's going to keep making them i've been hearing rumors that they've stopped making them that could be true it could simply be that the great amount of demand for these has just made them really hard to get and as i said in that video about where to find the foodsaver tops don't give up searching and and a few things i didn't think to say and a lot of people under that video recommended several other places like wayfair to look online ace hardware harbor freight and many other places bed bath and beyond i think was another one and other such places just any place that sells either canning supplies or kitchen supplies or both you might be able to find them there and then also the first place you should actually be looking is on your facebook market or if you go garage sale and or anything like that look for them there some people have been able to find them secondhand sometimes people have just been putting it out there on their social media saying i'm trying to find the foodsaver tops does anybody have one that they're not using that i would love to buy it from you also try to be creative and come up with your own methods you can even use if you have the canisters that used to come with the original foodsavers which i had years ago and i didn't know what their purpose was you can use those for sealing jars too by simply putting the jar down inside the canister it will fit in put the canister lid on and then pump it up with either your foodsaver machine or your brake bleeder pump and that will seal your jars too i wish i would have known that many years ago when i got my very first foodsaver machine and it came with those canisters and i never used them for anything and i think i did finally get rid of them after hanging on to them for years and that was long before i realized i could vacuum seal into jars and also don't forget you don't have to vacuum seal things into jars you can always go with mylar bags and an oxygen absorber or if you have a machine that can vacuum seal your mylar bags those are some other options too some people even like to use oven canning which i've never done and i don't have any good tips on that there are going to be many things so you're not going to want to oven can that's only going to be good for some things but i recommend looking just doing a search on youtube or just on the web in general to see if you can find instructions and information on what you can oven can and how to do that and basically it relies on the heat from the oven to seal the jars for your dried goods so anyway there are other methods you don't have to rely on this alone all right well i hope you enjoyed this video and if you were interested in any other of the frequently asked questions i've been covering and will have more to do i'll be linking down below the playlist to my frequently asked questions where i try to answer each individual question one at a time to make it easier for me and for you and also don't forget to share any of these videos with people that you know could glean something important from it or looking for answers to that very same question alright well thanks for watching take care and god bless [Music]

Channel: Rain Country

Views: 19,896

Rating: 4.9822221 out of 5

Keywords: traditional, old-ways, Health, Garden, Frugal, Homesteading, Self-Sustainability, Cooking, DIY, Homemade, natural-living, herbs

Id: CjkzxitE9UY

Length: 11min 57sec (717 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 08 2020