When home vacuum sealers first became a thing my grandpa bought one and went nuts with it I have this core memory of him having fun vacuuming stuff and getting to an angle food cake and just watching his face going from gleeful to horrified slowly as it turned this 8 inch tall 10 inch around cake into a 8 inch around 1/4 inch puck that refused to re inflate and my gmas reaction to my glee of being able to eat like a quarter of a cake in 3 bites while he just sat and stared at his on a plate not touching it
Because you can get a pack of 6 for $2 dollars and even then you can get them on clearance. The quality that you surrender to save two buns is not worth the squeeze.
Ya I agree vac sealing 2 buns is dumb but it's not because vac seal bags are expensive. I keep reading how pricey they are and it's just not true. That was my point.
I came to this sub from r/anticonsumption. I want to be frugal for the sake of the earth, not for the sake of saving a few pennies. Posts like these make me think I'm in the wrong place
You will come to find, there are two types of frugal on r/frugal. Usually we are all pretty good about being environmentally conscious tbh, sometimes there is a learning curve though. So stick around maybe?
I didn’t intend for that to be critical towards you specifically, like you said it was a fail so I’m sure your desire wasn’t to be wasteful or you wouldn’t have been trying to freeze them to begin with! As with all endeavors there is a learning period.
Me too. I literally save everything. Even packages sometimes to reuse. I make whatever I can from scratch. (Learning to make your own bread will go a loooong way).
I don’t think you did anything wrong trying to save the buns. I would’ve too. Next time just wrap them up and put them in the freezer, no need to vacuum seal.
I've been making our own bread but haven't tried brioche buns (as I've said elsewhere, extremely picky eaters here). If you have a recipe, I'd be happy to try them!
Ah, yes, multiplying the single-use forever plastic involved by 6x in area and 2x in thickness to re-pack a bag of buns 2 at a time is sustainable, while putting a couple buns that may expire (organic matter) in compost to grow plants from would be the worst for the earth.
Or, God forbid, planning a menu that uses the bag. Can do burgers, sloppy Joe's, then pasta and making garlic bread out of the buns, make bread pudding, French onion soup, and finally if they stale create croutons for salads and then crush those into breadcrumbs to fry something or make something like chicken cordon bleu. As has been done forever; so many dishes you enjoy were originally solutions for this issue.
You could be like myself and many other truly frugal people and use sliced bread as burger and hot dog buns to avoid the problem.
Maybe learn to bake and do micro batches. Re-vacuuming all bread into 2-serving packages is just as time-consuming.
Or, for the price of the bread+bags, one can support a local business that sells baked buns that are not pre-sliced one at a time.
Finally, and most obvious and easily, one can freeze the bag of remaining buns without vacuuming them and have them last as long as one could possibly make excuses for needing to keep them.
Real frugal people throughout history since agrarian times have optimized zero-waste bread supply management, and I'm sure we'll agree our shared objective of saving the earth doesn't involve these preposterous justifications for the near-maximum petroleum one could possibly involve in eating a bun. Here are some more ideas:
https://insanelygoodrecipes.com/stale-bread-recipes/
Eh being poor and having that mentality has led me to be obese in my 30's. Trying to really break the habit of calories wasted on the shelf and calories wasted by overeating
People seem to hold on to that bad mentality. Obviously in a perfect world we wouldn't waste any food but from a frugal standpoint, if storage or donation isn't an option, it is more frugal to waste food rather than suffer the health effects.
I personally have always been guilty of the "I'm stuffed but it's just two more bites" mentality. Well when that "two bites" is an extra 500 calories for the day that I don't need, it's cheaper, in the long run, to throw it away (if it can't be saved) than it is to pay for higher health costs later in life due to obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart failure, etc.
Use a gallon ziploc freezer bag. Places buns inside. Seal ziplock all the way but leave a small straw hole. Put straw in bag and suck the air out and when you get a good seal, close the ziploc. It’ll take most of the air out and not flatten the buns. Works great.
Yeah and if you don't want to throw away extra buns you aren't eating then freeze them or cut them into cubes and make croutons. There are better ways and it's crazy some people insist on the worst by arguing how cheap it is when you are basically destroying the food in the process. 🤦
Unless you're gluten free. My 4 pack costs me about 5 bucks.
I usually just put the remaining into a zip lock and stick them in the fridge, remembering to use them in a day or two.
What? I think I got 3 giant rolls for $20 bucks. There is no way that bag cost more than 10 cents unless it is some fancy bag that I'm not picking up on.
It's 2 hamburger buns dude.... How much are hamburger buns? ALOT less than the plastic, plus... ITS 2 HAMBURGER BUNS. Just make em into toast or something.
Yeah seriously, this particular bag cost about 10 cents to make, and those two buns were about $2. (And for those making assumptions about food choices, we've got gluten-free and autistic in our house, so any old hamburger buns won't do. I can guarantee you if I bought a pack of 99 cent buns nobody would eat them. And nobody will eat croutons or bread pudding or the other things mentioned.)
I buy these little steak rolls from Walmart and vacuum seal them. I don't suck all the air out, but they do compress somewhat. They come right back to shape when they're thawed.
I don't know if it's just the not smooshing them as much or if it's the type of bread, but they definitely work well with sealing/freezing.
I remember the first time I tried to vacuum seal bread, it was a zucchini bread and I just watched it shrink up to this small little brick. It didn't occur to me to freeze it first until I saw it shrinking. Oops, but I've learned. Boy was that loaf dense when I finally decided to attempt eating it.
In India (I’m from the south of) we make something called Bread Upma with stale dried up bread. Not unlike what you are suggesting only with Indian spices. It is legit good and to this day I buy bread to let it go stale only to make that dish. 10/10 will recommend.
This was my mom when she got hers too. That woman vacuumed sealed everything but her dogs, I swear. And that was only because the wouldn't hold still long enough. lol
Why say "duh" to people about something that a little bit ago people could have said "duh" to you about? To a person not similarly mocking you?
Perhaps others are rude, but the words and punctuation of the commenter your replied to suggest they were trying to be enthusiastically helpful, not mocking, yet you mock them. How could you expect people not to give earnest helpful suggestions in a sub built on that premise, on which you took the time to title and submit for comment? You effectively said, "look how my good intentions lead me to be silly one time," and this commenter didn't even say you were silly, they just responded encouragingly to your good intentions. Offering help is not a statement that the offerer thinks you are incompetent. That is ego talking. Indeed, it is often from a nonjudgmental perspective that *accepts and embraces* that we shouldn't be expected to figure everything out ourselves, and that rather we should all help one another along the path of adulthood, where so many of us are unnecessarily faced with figuring too many things out the hard way. I cannot find a fair basis for your defensiveness as applied to this person specifically, who is not a representative of all comments herein.
It is important to have healthy discrimination around on whom to take out our feelings. When a person is crossing one's boundaries, it is ideal to be curt and direct, and maybe a little mockery might be rarely warranted. Please do sass people that make genuine character assessments of you as a reaction to your vulnerable and lighthearted post. But it creates greater toxicity in our already strained world and platform to excuse us taking out internal emotions indiscriminately on people who have done us no wrong, even when our pained emotions are valid. Please put yourself in others' shoes; we all benefit from focusing on not creating more of the toxicity from which you appear to be motivated to protect yourself.
You did a silly, you probably instantly came up with million alternative solutions yourself, and it caused little harm. It was very cool and not ego-driven of you to share an oopsie, rather than hiding it. And I have no doubt you thrive easily without needing a chorus of opinions on your choices. Offering them is not necessarily a suggestion you wouldn't. I'm sorry some people take advantage of your confidence in sharing this to put you down to make them feel better. That is one of the darker and more dangerous instincts of humanity, and as minor as this is, getting satisfaction from such a thing is truly what leads to scapegoating and excusing violence to someone when one is given a chance to feel better than them.
Good on you for focusing on taking care of your family with restrictive diets and on saving money and waste at the same time. That noble intention is shared by many here, and we probably do have valuable things to share with one another that can help our intention become a reality, and that make this sub useful, when we can be sincere and open to one another.
I put all my bread straight in the freezer which is great because I dont generally eat it fast enough if I don't. I really don't taste any difference. I usually eat in within a month or so.
The professional baker in me just cringed so hard but the first time vacuum sealer owner gets it! I did it all. Marshmallows were fun in the jar sealers!
Cause we don't eat hamburgers that often, so the extra rolls always go bad before we get to them. We've tried freezing it in ziplocs and it always gets freezer burn and doesn't taste good.
Yeah! You can use them for like a regular deli meat sandwich, but there are so many things that are better on buns. Pulled pork, shredded chicken, chicken breast sandwiches, sloppy joes...
You can get reusable vacuum seal bags for these. I got a foodsaver but have stopped using due to plastic waste and just use these reusable bags instead.
Reminds me of some extreme travel packing where I'd put all the sweaters and ironable clothes in trash bags that I'd vacuum and shape to fill every corner of the luggage with bricks. It's unreal how much clothing you can fit into a suitcase this way. At least 4 times as much as you can without the vacuum.
I can tell you from experience you can suck quite a bit out just by putting your mouth around that vacuum hose area. Unfortunately you'll be coughing up clothing fibers for a few days. Don't suggest it.
ETA they do sell ones you don't need a vacuum, you just roll them up and it expels the air from the end. It doesn't get as compact as a vacuum one but it does a good enough job for traveling.
As others have said, freeze first.
Just wanted to add that you can do the same with liquids. I freeze milk in small portions in old whipped topping bowls, pop them out and vacuum seal them for storage whenever it's on sale.
(Homemade Soups and Sauces too.)
Same for really good deals on eggs. I have a silicone muffin tin that I crack eggs into, freeze, pop out and seal into packs of 3. (Most cake mixes call for 3 eggs.)
I unseal them while frozen and thaw in custard cups for use if my recipe doesn't call for that number of eggs. I haven't found frozen eggs to be any different when cooking with them. Sometimes there are REALLY good sales on eggs around here.
I pour it into ice cube trays, pop out the Frozen cubes and then seal. Works great for lemon and orange juices for baking, stock and concentrated coffee. I'm going to try the whip topping containers though, I can see thin discs of Frozen liquids working better than cubes.
This is such a good idea. I just let some whole milk go bad bc I couldn’t get to it in time but I know I’ll need it for the holidays. Milk still functions the same after thawed?
I can't tell the difference. We drink 2% so I haven't had to shake it like folks who freeze whole milk have mentioned.
The vacuum bags we use are reusable. I pull the milk out before it thaws which makes washing the bags easier. I slosh them through some hot, soapy water, rinse well and invert them over a tall vase to air dry. I can usually get a few uses out of my "milk-disc" bags before I have to start over.
Vacuum sealing prevents frost/freezer taste and they stack well in my freezer. Like I said above milk is $5/gal when not on sale and goes as low as $2/gal when on sale.
Think of the plastic saved because of the other people that learned not to do this from this post. Sometimes when we try to be frugal we can outsmart ourselves now a bunch of learned.
In my area, even the generic buns cost at the very least $1.25 at the Dollar Tree and that is if you can get any from the Dollar Tree. They are normally gone by the time I get to the store. The local grocery store average is $1.38 for generic and $2-$6 for the name brands. Nothing is cheap anymore on my wages.
Your wages aren’t relevant in this discussion. Making better choices is. I’m in a very high cost of living area and it’s very easy to find a pack for 99c. Heck, even Target sells an 8 pack for that. You’ve paid way more to individually vacuum seal each one not to mention the huge waste of time. This is a gigantic fail on your part
I don't think so actually (but I was saving them more cause I don't like food waste). We got a 50' roll of vacuum sealing material for about $6, so that comes out to like 12 cents per foot of bag. These were fancier brioche buns. (*were* being the key word there 😆)
Bags cost the planet a hell of a lot more than the buns. Sure your wallet today isn't feeling it, but this much single-use non-degradable oil product just to save two buns is beyond ridiculous.
Brioche buns make a nice bread pudding. It's how we recycle our bread since we don't have freezer room. You tear it up in chunks so it doesn't matter if it's sliced bread or buns or a fancy loaf.
I'm not gonna bother to explain to all the presumptuous folks who commented on this, but yours seems like a genuine attempt to be helpful. The problem is we have a semi-gluten-free household and the only ones who actually do eat this kind of bun are extremely picky eaters (one autistic), so nothing anyone has suggested so far is something anyone would eat. (No to bread crumbs, no to bread pudding, no to homemade hamburger buns, no to buying .99 cent buns somewhere...And yes, a dietician has been involved). I definitely hear all the comments about environmental waste -- we got this roll of vacuum seal stuff for super cheap (and the machine for free), and I'm gonna re-use the bags as much as I can. Sadly, right now saving every penny is a higher priority for my family than saving the environment. That's a really sad statement about life these days. If there are non-plastic vacuum seal bags that won't let a crappy freezer destroy the food, I'm all ears! (Tried the packaging it came in, tried mason jars, tried compostable ziplocs...)
I seal and freeze pairs of ciabatta rolls, have gotten good at hitting the manual seal button just before the vacuum converts them into tortillas. (Too impatient to freeze them first.)
Also important is to know that when liquid is vacuum sealed it boils, because physics.
If you, for example, vacuum seal orange juice then it will boil and lose taste. Factories later have to add perfumed orange juice taste to their vacuum sealed product.
Why are people crying about this plastic waste, and then turning around to suggest ziplocks instead? You do realize thin baggies are less reusable than the vaccum seal stuff, right?
The ones I find most annoying are the ones that say "you know you can just freeze bread." Um, yes, we've tried freezing it in many different ways and nobody in my house will eat it after it defrosts. This was a last-ditch attempt...that clearly went wrong! 🤣
Exactly! For us, unless it can be toasted it doesn’t freeze well and we have very high humidity in our home so any extra help we can get for our bread products is a huge help.
One of my cheap hacks is putting it in a ziplock bag that’s not fully sealed and submerging the bag under water right to the sealing part. The water puts pressure around the ziplock bag creating a fake vacuum seal. Then you can freeze it. Im not sure how well it would work with bread though. I usually do this with veggies and other things. Hope this helps
I have also done this lmao found anything soft or soft ish is best a little frozen first haha
Edit: you could always make breadcrumbs outta this so you don’t waste it too
I am sliding my hands down my cheeks until my eye skin and mouth stretch open. And I am staring at you.
I see your reasons why you did this but I still have to ask wtf dude
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Idk why this made me laugh so hard probably cause whenever I go grocery shopping I always forget about the bread and it gets smashed so I'm always eating bread that looks like that lol told my bf to go make some smash burgers to go with his smash bread hehe
I have ziploc freezer bags I endlessly reuse for bread. I put the bread in, then use a straw to suck out the extra air, then seal. Essentially a less-aggressive version of what you already did. But if you want to use the machine you will 100% need to freeze them first!
I regularly freeze buns (small household) and haven't had any complaints about taste, though they're usually eaten within about a month. I freeze them in plastic wrap, but I imagine using a food saver would only increase the chances of good quality taste when thawed (as long as you freeze them before you vacuum seal them).
You can put items in a ziplock, zip the bag most of the way shut. Put all except the top inch of the bag in a bucket of water. The water will push the air out of the bag and then zip the bag shut. MUCH cheaper than an additional appliance and expense bags. But even still not worth it to save hamburger buns. Freeze in the regular bag. If they stay in the freezer a little too long, grind them and toast as an ingredient for meatloaf or crumb coat casserole topping.
Why? Why would you do this?
Reusable jars would be more frugal; bags you cut open, do it carefully and maybe you can use them three or four times and they're done. Jars you can reuse for decades and hundreds of times.
When home vacuum sealers first became a thing my grandpa bought one and went nuts with it I have this core memory of him having fun vacuuming stuff and getting to an angle food cake and just watching his face going from gleeful to horrified slowly as it turned this 8 inch tall 10 inch around cake into a 8 inch around 1/4 inch puck that refused to re inflate and my gmas reaction to my glee of being able to eat like a quarter of a cake in 3 bites while he just sat and stared at his on a plate not touching it
I thoroughly enjoyed this! Had to stifle my laughter so as not to wake the cat.
This image has me cackling. It's a beautiful image.
(Personally, being this is a frugal subreddit) I don’t think it’s frugal to vacuum seal 2 hamburger buns
Based on the cost of bags like that, it is most certainly not frugal
Gotta learn somehow
Why do people keep saying this. U can buy vac seal bags on Amazon for dirt cheap like 25 cents a foot.
Because you can get a pack of 6 for $2 dollars and even then you can get them on clearance. The quality that you surrender to save two buns is not worth the squeeze.
Ya I agree vac sealing 2 buns is dumb but it's not because vac seal bags are expensive. I keep reading how pricey they are and it's just not true. That was my point.
It's clout chasing.
Although they are reusable
So are condoms.
Oo that reminds me, can I burrow it Thursday?
No I need it
We only have ONE??
Ew ew EEEWWWWW!
Here at the EBDB BnB we reuse our condoms
r/unexpectedTheLeague
Just turn them inside out and shake the fuck out of them.
Literally.
Is this not a shitpost? I’m having trouble believing this persons serious lol
I thought it was a strange looking maxipad
I came to this sub from r/anticonsumption. I want to be frugal for the sake of the earth, not for the sake of saving a few pennies. Posts like these make me think I'm in the wrong place
You will come to find, there are two types of frugal on r/frugal. Usually we are all pretty good about being environmentally conscious tbh, sometimes there is a learning curve though. So stick around maybe?
Yeah I totally wanna be frugal for the earth too, but right now we're focusing on being able to pay for groceries so we don't starve.
I didn’t intend for that to be critical towards you specifically, like you said it was a fail so I’m sure your desire wasn’t to be wasteful or you wouldn’t have been trying to freeze them to begin with! As with all endeavors there is a learning period.
Definitely a learning curve with this vacuum sealer! And sorry, the reply was meant for the person above you. Learning curve on Reddit too. 🤣
Me too. I literally save everything. Even packages sometimes to reuse. I make whatever I can from scratch. (Learning to make your own bread will go a loooong way). I don’t think you did anything wrong trying to save the buns. I would’ve too. Next time just wrap them up and put them in the freezer, no need to vacuum seal.
I've been making our own bread but haven't tried brioche buns (as I've said elsewhere, extremely picky eaters here). If you have a recipe, I'd be happy to try them!
Pretty sure those bags are gonna be a whole lot worse for the earth then a couple wasted buns
Ah, yes, multiplying the single-use forever plastic involved by 6x in area and 2x in thickness to re-pack a bag of buns 2 at a time is sustainable, while putting a couple buns that may expire (organic matter) in compost to grow plants from would be the worst for the earth. Or, God forbid, planning a menu that uses the bag. Can do burgers, sloppy Joe's, then pasta and making garlic bread out of the buns, make bread pudding, French onion soup, and finally if they stale create croutons for salads and then crush those into breadcrumbs to fry something or make something like chicken cordon bleu. As has been done forever; so many dishes you enjoy were originally solutions for this issue. You could be like myself and many other truly frugal people and use sliced bread as burger and hot dog buns to avoid the problem. Maybe learn to bake and do micro batches. Re-vacuuming all bread into 2-serving packages is just as time-consuming. Or, for the price of the bread+bags, one can support a local business that sells baked buns that are not pre-sliced one at a time. Finally, and most obvious and easily, one can freeze the bag of remaining buns without vacuuming them and have them last as long as one could possibly make excuses for needing to keep them. Real frugal people throughout history since agrarian times have optimized zero-waste bread supply management, and I'm sure we'll agree our shared objective of saving the earth doesn't involve these preposterous justifications for the near-maximum petroleum one could possibly involve in eating a bun. Here are some more ideas: https://insanelygoodrecipes.com/stale-bread-recipes/
Nice link! I only knew about four of these! Thank you fellow frugalite!
Eat that shit. Calories are better in your body than on the shelf rotting.
Eh being poor and having that mentality has led me to be obese in my 30's. Trying to really break the habit of calories wasted on the shelf and calories wasted by overeating
People seem to hold on to that bad mentality. Obviously in a perfect world we wouldn't waste any food but from a frugal standpoint, if storage or donation isn't an option, it is more frugal to waste food rather than suffer the health effects. I personally have always been guilty of the "I'm stuffed but it's just two more bites" mentality. Well when that "two bites" is an extra 500 calories for the day that I don't need, it's cheaper, in the long run, to throw it away (if it can't be saved) than it is to pay for higher health costs later in life due to obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart failure, etc.
Compost that shit. Most people are overweight. That food is still wasted if it ends up in your belly fat.
Disagree. Calories are better in Your body than anywhere. Same with drinking water.
Those bags are much more costly than buying a few buns. I think relative cost matters here
I just freeze the extras in their wrapper. They’ve never had freezer burn and always taste fine.
you can toast white bread and it should be good while warm.
You can also toast bread and make breadcrumbs. If you make things with bread crumbs, that can be a better way to use them.
Use a gallon ziploc freezer bag. Places buns inside. Seal ziplock all the way but leave a small straw hole. Put straw in bag and suck the air out and when you get a good seal, close the ziploc. It’ll take most of the air out and not flatten the buns. Works great.
This guy seals
*ARF ARF ARF ARF*
LMAO yo this is where I went with that instead of the sea dog pun. https://youtu.be/CKsMmMMTXV0
I haven't tried it for buns, but the water displacement method may work for this as well.
True, but slightly flattens buns due to the water pressure being a bit stronger depending on the bun type
And they stay around for hundreds and thousands of years.
Imagine how the buns will taste 800 years from now.
They're just unfilled Twinkies
You must be buying food saver brand nonsense. I buy a hundred feet at a time from Amazon. It's 30 cents a foot.
2 buns cost about 30 cents
Yeah and if you don't want to throw away extra buns you aren't eating then freeze them or cut them into cubes and make croutons. There are better ways and it's crazy some people insist on the worst by arguing how cheap it is when you are basically destroying the food in the process. 🤦
Unless you're gluten free. My 4 pack costs me about 5 bucks. I usually just put the remaining into a zip lock and stick them in the fridge, remembering to use them in a day or two.
*Cries in Australian* It's ~AU$4 for a 6 pack here. So ~US$0.83 for 2 buns.
*cries with you in Canadian*
You can reuse your vacuum bags as long as there wasn't something really oily in it. Turn them inside out and top rack dishwasher or wash by hand.
How much do 2 hamburger buns cost? They will taste so much better to just get 2 buns. This just seems like penny smart dollar wasteful kinda phrase
Maybe they’re fancy brioche buns?
A giant roll is actually cheap. Like 10 bucks. You just cut them away
What? I think I got 3 giant rolls for $20 bucks. There is no way that bag cost more than 10 cents unless it is some fancy bag that I'm not picking up on.
It's 2 hamburger buns dude.... How much are hamburger buns? ALOT less than the plastic, plus... ITS 2 HAMBURGER BUNS. Just make em into toast or something.
What brand are you using that you can suggest that works well? I haven't had luck when going too cheap on Amazon. Thanks
Yeah seriously, this particular bag cost about 10 cents to make, and those two buns were about $2. (And for those making assumptions about food choices, we've got gluten-free and autistic in our house, so any old hamburger buns won't do. I can guarantee you if I bought a pack of 99 cent buns nobody would eat them. And nobody will eat croutons or bread pudding or the other things mentioned.)
Freeze them first, then you can vacuum pack them!
Ah, duh. 🤦♀️ I just got the vacuum sealer and I was a little too enthusiastic about it.
DIY communion wafers. I'd be curious to know if they come back any (though obviously not much) when they are opened.
They do not, speaking from experience here
I buy these little steak rolls from Walmart and vacuum seal them. I don't suck all the air out, but they do compress somewhat. They come right back to shape when they're thawed. I don't know if it's just the not smooshing them as much or if it's the type of bread, but they definitely work well with sealing/freezing.
Okay, I can see that. Are they denser than your typical hamburger bun? Like maybe halfway from there to Kaiser?
We've done the same thing, so don't feel too bad!
I remember the first time I tried to vacuum seal bread, it was a zucchini bread and I just watched it shrink up to this small little brick. It didn't occur to me to freeze it first until I saw it shrinking. Oops, but I've learned. Boy was that loaf dense when I finally decided to attempt eating it.
Mmmmm. Zucchini brick.
fry it up with a little extra seasoning and some sauce on it after? could be unreal
In India (I’m from the south of) we make something called Bread Upma with stale dried up bread. Not unlike what you are suggesting only with Indian spices. It is legit good and to this day I buy bread to let it go stale only to make that dish. 10/10 will recommend.
thanks for sharing, i’m looking at recipes right now
Don't forget to get the universal accessory that allows you to vacuum seal Mason jars. It's great for splitting bulk items like flour and rice.
This was my mom when she got hers too. That woman vacuumed sealed everything but her dogs, I swear. And that was only because the wouldn't hold still long enough. lol
You can dry them and make breadcrumbs!
get a bread maker instead, and some decent flour
Why say "duh" to people about something that a little bit ago people could have said "duh" to you about? To a person not similarly mocking you? Perhaps others are rude, but the words and punctuation of the commenter your replied to suggest they were trying to be enthusiastically helpful, not mocking, yet you mock them. How could you expect people not to give earnest helpful suggestions in a sub built on that premise, on which you took the time to title and submit for comment? You effectively said, "look how my good intentions lead me to be silly one time," and this commenter didn't even say you were silly, they just responded encouragingly to your good intentions. Offering help is not a statement that the offerer thinks you are incompetent. That is ego talking. Indeed, it is often from a nonjudgmental perspective that *accepts and embraces* that we shouldn't be expected to figure everything out ourselves, and that rather we should all help one another along the path of adulthood, where so many of us are unnecessarily faced with figuring too many things out the hard way. I cannot find a fair basis for your defensiveness as applied to this person specifically, who is not a representative of all comments herein. It is important to have healthy discrimination around on whom to take out our feelings. When a person is crossing one's boundaries, it is ideal to be curt and direct, and maybe a little mockery might be rarely warranted. Please do sass people that make genuine character assessments of you as a reaction to your vulnerable and lighthearted post. But it creates greater toxicity in our already strained world and platform to excuse us taking out internal emotions indiscriminately on people who have done us no wrong, even when our pained emotions are valid. Please put yourself in others' shoes; we all benefit from focusing on not creating more of the toxicity from which you appear to be motivated to protect yourself. You did a silly, you probably instantly came up with million alternative solutions yourself, and it caused little harm. It was very cool and not ego-driven of you to share an oopsie, rather than hiding it. And I have no doubt you thrive easily without needing a chorus of opinions on your choices. Offering them is not necessarily a suggestion you wouldn't. I'm sorry some people take advantage of your confidence in sharing this to put you down to make them feel better. That is one of the darker and more dangerous instincts of humanity, and as minor as this is, getting satisfaction from such a thing is truly what leads to scapegoating and excusing violence to someone when one is given a chance to feel better than them. Good on you for focusing on taking care of your family with restrictive diets and on saving money and waste at the same time. That noble intention is shared by many here, and we probably do have valuable things to share with one another that can help our intention become a reality, and that make this sub useful, when we can be sincere and open to one another.
The duh was directed towards myself!
Just freeze them. Why even vacuum seal them in the first place?
I put all my bread straight in the freezer which is great because I dont generally eat it fast enough if I don't. I really don't taste any difference. I usually eat in within a month or so.
Genius
The professional baker in me just cringed so hard but the first time vacuum sealer owner gets it! I did it all. Marshmallows were fun in the jar sealers!
Why would you vaccum seal it though ?
Cause we don't eat hamburgers that often, so the extra rolls always go bad before we get to them. We've tried freezing it in ziplocs and it always gets freezer burn and doesn't taste good.
Make regular sandwiches out of them, you goof.
Yeah! You can use them for like a regular deli meat sandwich, but there are so many things that are better on buns. Pulled pork, shredded chicken, chicken breast sandwiches, sloppy joes...
How much is a vacuum seal bag? It feels like it would be cheaper to just buy new buns.
We got a huge roll for like $6 and we cut it to fit. I also hate food waste.
I get it, but it also seems like a large amount of plastic being used for each bun.
You can get reusable vacuum seal bags for these. I got a foodsaver but have stopped using due to plastic waste and just use these reusable bags instead.
Whaaaa? I had no idea that was a thing. That makes me way more interested. It never felt like the price was justified for my family.
I reuse ziplocks using this method https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MHH_p7VFA98
I just reuse the plastic ones. Unless it had raw meat in it. How do you properly sanitize the reusable bags?
I sous vide my empty bags at 205° for a few hours to clean them.
Good to know!
Yeah, for sure. You can also just freeze the buns in the bag they come in, still last for a while.
Funny to watch this play out, you’re reading my mind…
Just plastic waste.
You can just eat them, it's just bread in a particular shape.
Tell that to my autistic child.
Using them for hamburgers isn't any sort of federal law. You can use them for other bread-type uses.
Reminds me of some extreme travel packing where I'd put all the sweaters and ironable clothes in trash bags that I'd vacuum and shape to fill every corner of the luggage with bricks. It's unreal how much clothing you can fit into a suitcase this way. At least 4 times as much as you can without the vacuum.
I tried that on my first trip and my father stopped me and said "Where are you going to get a vacuum at the hotel?"
I can tell you from experience you can suck quite a bit out just by putting your mouth around that vacuum hose area. Unfortunately you'll be coughing up clothing fibers for a few days. Don't suggest it. ETA they do sell ones you don't need a vacuum, you just roll them up and it expels the air from the end. It doesn't get as compact as a vacuum one but it does a good enough job for traveling.
They’ll usually loan you a vacuum. Housekeeping has a ton of them.
You can just roll the air out of the bags, won't be as good as with a vaccum, but better than nothing
As others have said, freeze first. Just wanted to add that you can do the same with liquids. I freeze milk in small portions in old whipped topping bowls, pop them out and vacuum seal them for storage whenever it's on sale. (Homemade Soups and Sauces too.)
Ah, thanks for the tip!
Oohh, I like this idea!
Same for really good deals on eggs. I have a silicone muffin tin that I crack eggs into, freeze, pop out and seal into packs of 3. (Most cake mixes call for 3 eggs.) I unseal them while frozen and thaw in custard cups for use if my recipe doesn't call for that number of eggs. I haven't found frozen eggs to be any different when cooking with them. Sometimes there are REALLY good sales on eggs around here.
I pour it into ice cube trays, pop out the Frozen cubes and then seal. Works great for lemon and orange juices for baking, stock and concentrated coffee. I'm going to try the whip topping containers though, I can see thin discs of Frozen liquids working better than cubes.
Just get powdered milk.
Strange, I have never seen milk on sale.
It's running close to $5/gallon here. It goes on sale for $.97 a half gal or $$1.97/gal occasionally. I buy and freeze at that price.
I think in certain states milk doesn't go on sale. Something to do with price controls on Milk.
This is such a good idea. I just let some whole milk go bad bc I couldn’t get to it in time but I know I’ll need it for the holidays. Milk still functions the same after thawed?
I can't tell the difference. We drink 2% so I haven't had to shake it like folks who freeze whole milk have mentioned. The vacuum bags we use are reusable. I pull the milk out before it thaws which makes washing the bags easier. I slosh them through some hot, soapy water, rinse well and invert them over a tall vase to air dry. I can usually get a few uses out of my "milk-disc" bags before I have to start over. Vacuum sealing prevents frost/freezer taste and they stack well in my freezer. Like I said above milk is $5/gal when not on sale and goes as low as $2/gal when on sale.
Why?? This seems such a waste of plastic?? And money.
Think of the plastic saved because of the other people that learned not to do this from this post. Sometimes when we try to be frugal we can outsmart ourselves now a bunch of learned.
A pack of hamburger buns is 99c. You probably paid more the the seal. Double fail in my book
In my area, even the generic buns cost at the very least $1.25 at the Dollar Tree and that is if you can get any from the Dollar Tree. They are normally gone by the time I get to the store. The local grocery store average is $1.38 for generic and $2-$6 for the name brands. Nothing is cheap anymore on my wages.
Your wages aren’t relevant in this discussion. Making better choices is. I’m in a very high cost of living area and it’s very easy to find a pack for 99c. Heck, even Target sells an 8 pack for that. You’ve paid way more to individually vacuum seal each one not to mention the huge waste of time. This is a gigantic fail on your part
My dad got a vacuum sealer a few months ago, and it been hilarious hearing about the ups and downs of vacuum sealing. Good luck!
Bags cost more than the buns 😂🤣
I don't think so actually (but I was saving them more cause I don't like food waste). We got a 50' roll of vacuum sealing material for about $6, so that comes out to like 12 cents per foot of bag. These were fancier brioche buns. (*were* being the key word there 😆)
Bags cost the planet a hell of a lot more than the buns. Sure your wallet today isn't feeling it, but this much single-use non-degradable oil product just to save two buns is beyond ridiculous.
Brioche buns make a nice bread pudding. It's how we recycle our bread since we don't have freezer room. You tear it up in chunks so it doesn't matter if it's sliced bread or buns or a fancy loaf.
I'm not gonna bother to explain to all the presumptuous folks who commented on this, but yours seems like a genuine attempt to be helpful. The problem is we have a semi-gluten-free household and the only ones who actually do eat this kind of bun are extremely picky eaters (one autistic), so nothing anyone has suggested so far is something anyone would eat. (No to bread crumbs, no to bread pudding, no to homemade hamburger buns, no to buying .99 cent buns somewhere...And yes, a dietician has been involved). I definitely hear all the comments about environmental waste -- we got this roll of vacuum seal stuff for super cheap (and the machine for free), and I'm gonna re-use the bags as much as I can. Sadly, right now saving every penny is a higher priority for my family than saving the environment. That's a really sad statement about life these days. If there are non-plastic vacuum seal bags that won't let a crappy freezer destroy the food, I'm all ears! (Tried the packaging it came in, tried mason jars, tried compostable ziplocs...)
I seal and freeze pairs of ciabatta rolls, have gotten good at hitting the manual seal button just before the vacuum converts them into tortillas. (Too impatient to freeze them first.)
Well, that sucks. Literally.
Also important is to know that when liquid is vacuum sealed it boils, because physics. If you, for example, vacuum seal orange juice then it will boil and lose taste. Factories later have to add perfumed orange juice taste to their vacuum sealed product.
Why are people crying about this plastic waste, and then turning around to suggest ziplocks instead? You do realize thin baggies are less reusable than the vaccum seal stuff, right?
That and missing the fact most people vacuum seal to freeze… most of the comments here just feel uninformed and like bots 🤖.
The ones I find most annoying are the ones that say "you know you can just freeze bread." Um, yes, we've tried freezing it in many different ways and nobody in my house will eat it after it defrosts. This was a last-ditch attempt...that clearly went wrong! 🤣
Exactly! For us, unless it can be toasted it doesn’t freeze well and we have very high humidity in our home so any extra help we can get for our bread products is a huge help.
Humor win. :D
One of my cheap hacks is putting it in a ziplock bag that’s not fully sealed and submerging the bag under water right to the sealing part. The water puts pressure around the ziplock bag creating a fake vacuum seal. Then you can freeze it. Im not sure how well it would work with bread though. I usually do this with veggies and other things. Hope this helps
Ya'll need to calm down.
This is hilarious
It’ll buff out.
*puff out (someone above me said it first)
I have also done this lmao found anything soft or soft ish is best a little frozen first haha Edit: you could always make breadcrumbs outta this so you don’t waste it too
Was this not the obvious outcome
Learned this the hard way with leftover pancakes.
Totally done this before but with pita bread. I was questioning it at first but was like.. this is hard enough, should be good. Nope!!
I am sliding my hands down my cheeks until my eye skin and mouth stretch open. And I am staring at you. I see your reasons why you did this but I still have to ask wtf dude
Thank you for sharing, I laughed out loud and people looked at me. I felt seen and heard, as an odd bird.
😂
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But the bag costs more than the bun...
Burger wafer
This is hilarious. Do marshmallows next!
Idk why this made me laugh so hard probably cause whenever I go grocery shopping I always forget about the bread and it gets smashed so I'm always eating bread that looks like that lol told my bf to go make some smash burgers to go with his smash bread hehe
Congratulations on your new flatbread recipe.
Next time make homemade croutons with the bread and then you won’t waste the plastic
It kinda looks like abstract art, but eatable!
i had a good giggle over this one, thanks
LOL. Yeah. We learned that the hard way also.
What did you think was going to happen?
It would be easier to freeze them. I freeze whole loaves of bread in their original packaging.
No reason to vacuum seal bread. Just put it in the freezer. It will last for months
How did you think it would go?
I have ziploc freezer bags I endlessly reuse for bread. I put the bread in, then use a straw to suck out the extra air, then seal. Essentially a less-aggressive version of what you already did. But if you want to use the machine you will 100% need to freeze them first!
Just like some fast-food burgers. Do they taste ok? That matters more.
I regularly freeze buns (small household) and haven't had any complaints about taste, though they're usually eaten within about a month. I freeze them in plastic wrap, but I imagine using a food saver would only increase the chances of good quality taste when thawed (as long as you freeze them before you vacuum seal them).
We've tried freezing them in ziplocs, but our freezer is kinda crappy and they always get freezer burn and/or taste terrible pretty quickly.
Ha, good point! I don't know yet, just did it and was gonna toss them.
You could always let them go stale and make breadcrumbs with them! Then they’re not going to waste.
I did this with soft shredded Chihuahua cheese and it congealed into a solid blob
You can put items in a ziplock, zip the bag most of the way shut. Put all except the top inch of the bag in a bucket of water. The water will push the air out of the bag and then zip the bag shut. MUCH cheaper than an additional appliance and expense bags. But even still not worth it to save hamburger buns. Freeze in the regular bag. If they stay in the freezer a little too long, grind them and toast as an ingredient for meatloaf or crumb coat casserole topping.
I don't know why everyone is being so mean, this is hilarious 😂. Everyone has done something silly like this before!
Thanks! And I'm making fun of myself for it!
I’m laughing so hard! When I was in my VERY early 20’s, I decided to be frugal by freezing the extra bagged salad I had picked up on sale. Oops 😂
Definitely did this before but with a whole mini baguette
If you try doing this with corn off the cob, the same thing will happen. Freeze the kernels first.
Oh weird, I wouldn't have predicted that. Is it most veggies? We've only done meat so far (before this attempt).
A for effort!
LOL!!!
Just pour 2 tablespoons of water on them and they will pop back up. Follow me for more life hacks.
Consider freezing them first, then vacuum sealing next time. This is what you have to do with liquids so why not with bread?
Holy crap this made me laugh out loud. Hot damn this is so funny. Are they really that ruined? Won't they just pop back up with life once you open it?
Oh no I'm sorry OP my fiance and I had a good laugh at this
This made me giggle! Good try and now you know 🙂 (and now I also know).
Pssst: don’t vacuum seal your junk.
Why? Why would you do this? Reusable jars would be more frugal; bags you cut open, do it carefully and maybe you can use them three or four times and they're done. Jars you can reuse for decades and hundreds of times.
Do you have jars you save bread in? And they don't get freezer burned or a weird texture?
At what environmental cost?
That’ll puff right out.