Cyrovac=vacuum seal?

[jdefran]

I am planning on loading up on some ribs that are a great price locally and they are cyrovaced. I don't have a vacuum sealers.

In your experience is a cyrovaced rack of ribs the same as vacuum sealing? How long would they last in the freezer?

 

[akoda]

In my experience, yes for the most part . I always make sure the packages are fairly tight, if you can easily pull the package back there is possibly a leak. You should easily be able to store for a year or so but some say the quality begins to suffer after a year.

 

[LongIslandEd]

Cryovacs remove air from the whole chamber - I believe where Food Savers and such remove air from the bag itself. Same difference, but Cryovac removes a little more air from what I understand. depending on when the meat was vacuumed, a year probably.

 

[jdefran]

Sweet guys, thank you for the insight.

 

[cheez59]

I have cooked ribs and butts that were well over a year in the freezer in cryovac. I didn't plan it that way but they got buried. They were perfectly good.

 

[buckhorn_cortez]

"Cryovac" is a trademark of Sealed Air Services, the company that invented BubbleWrap. Sealed Air Services is a packaging company.

In 1998 they purchased Cryovac from W.R. Grace Company, the people that invented the Cryovac process.

Here is a link to the Cryovac packaging website. It is simply vacuum bagging of food. Cryovac takes it to a professional level as they provide specialty bags with rip opening, the ability to go directly from the freezer to oven in the same bag, shrink-wrap vacuum bagging material, etc.

It is not a specialty process that withdraws more air - it is simply the first application of vacuum bagging and freezing food. Hence the name "Cryo" (involving extreme cold) and "vac" meaning vacuum.

 

[buckhorn_cortez]

Here is a link to the web page with the packing machines. You will see the smallest machine (Ultravac 250) is a combination shrink wrap / vacuum packaging machine.

 

[IamMadMan]

Commercially sealed raw meat (refered to as cyro-packed) is similar to vac-sealing, except that nitrogen is introduced into the package to void it of oxygen before sealing to prevent discoloration.

It can be kept in the freezer for long periods of time.