The Eurosealer: Does it work? Is it worth it?
Written: Mar 30 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Small, takes up little storage space
Cons: Takes time, patience and practice to master
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| iowamommy's Full Review: Eurosealer |
The Eurosealer commercial was intriguing to me. This item looked so nifty. The people on TV were zipping a little gadget along a plastic bag in order to seal it. It looked so quick and efficient. The purpose of this gadget is to seal up bags of food to keep them fresh. The commercial shows people opening up bags of food that had gone bad and making horrid faces at the discovery, with a lot of overkill on their part! Their faces turned to glee when using this nifty product.
I ran across Eurosealer in a store quite awhile later. Being curious, I decided to give it a shot.
What is it?
The Eurosealer is a hand-held unit that measures about 2 x 4 inches. It consists of two sections of plastic; one on the bottom that serves as a base, and one on top that you push down to make contact with the base. It is much like the style and function of a stapler, with the top part hinged to the base at one end, and the other end serving as the “contact” place when pressed down.
The spot where the top piece makes contact with the base has a little pad with a wire embedded within. This wire is the element that heats up. When you place a bag between in this unit and push the top down, it is sealing the bag by heating up the plastic and ever so gently melting it, in theory.
The unit can operate with an AC wall adapter or 2 AA batteries. The adapter has a generous length of cord. For those of you who dread yet another adapter (hmmm…which appliance does this one belong to?), this one is different. The part that plugs into the unit has a hexagon shape, so no other adapter will fit it. You’ll recognize this as your Eurosealer adapter on sight, instead of wondering if this belongs to your electric grill or your waffle maker.
There is a magnet on the bottom of the unit for those who prefer to store it stuck on the side of the refrigerator.
How do I use it?
After plugging this in or equipping the unit with batteries, you press the top down so it is making contact with the bottom for a few seconds. At that point, you will see the wire (element) glowing orange. That indicates that it is ready to use.
You take the bag you want to seal and flatten the end out so it is a smooth surface. You put the edge of the bag in the sealer, starting with the center of the bag. You press down the sealer and slide it, still pressed down, towards the side of the bag. When this is done, you go back to the center and seal the other half.
Is it really that easy?
In a word, no! It does work, but not without practice and patience. It doesn’t work the way the people on TV depict it. Here are some points to keep in mind:
All bags are not created equal.
Certain types seal better than others. The type of bag that chips come in (crinkly plastic or foil) seal a lot better than the other type of plastic that contains frozen food; the softer, thinner plastic.
I mainly have used this for sealing bags of frozen food, mostly half-used bags of French fries of tater tots or else food that you buy in bulk, like 2 dozen tenderloins, for example. I have had trouble with these types of bags. Being thin plastic, they are easy to melt and tear while sealing. You have to have your pressure and gliding action just so in order to avoid melting. I move the unit along and it tears a hole rather than sealing it! When I do that, I have to try again. Sometimes I end up with three passes on each half of the bag to get it right! No matter how hard you try, that “perfect touch” is elusive.
Also, since you seal one half and then the other, you have to make sure your second seal matches up to the end of your first one, or you will have two separate seal lines that don’t meet in the middle. It is harder than you think to “aim” the element because you can’t really see where it is pressing until it is already in progress. This is remedied by going back to the middle of the bag and making a few swipes over the part where the two lines were supposed to meet. Ten minutes later, you might have a sealed bag of food.
Chip bags and those made of the stiffer plastic or foil seal a lot easier, but it was the frozen food that I mainly wanted to use it for.
There are some things the directions don’t tell you.
The bags that contain frozen food are not only challenging because they are thin plastic, but they also have moisture inside. After you take something out of the bag to bake it, you go to seal up the bag and find little droplets of water inside it. Mix that in with crumbs from the product, and you have less than ideal sealing conditions.
You are supposed to cut down the bag to the new level the food is in so you can seal it in a nice, cute little compact package. Be careful while trimming! If you trim too closely, you won’t have enough excess bag left to flatten out over the food and join up to the other side. Of course, this has never happened at my house!
If you are saving a food that has directions printed on the bag, don’t cut off that part of the bag! You’ll find yourself without the directions next time you want to make this food. Again, this has never happened to me personally. I am much smarter than that!
The question you have all been dying to ask…
For those of you who have seen the commercial, you no doubt are left wondering about the dubious claim made that this thing can seal a bag of water, not leaking at all while being held upside down. Not having actually needed to do this in real life (who needs a bag of water?), I decided to run a little experiment for the purposes of this Epinion.
Under sterile laboratory conditions (a kitchen filled with last night’s dishes, empty baby bottles and an overflowing stack of mail), I tried the sealer on the test material (a Ziploc bag with the seal chopped off.)
Being careful not to electrocute myself, I attempted to seal the bag. This was no easy feat, since I had to hold it upright to make the seal, not lying flat as when sealing other products. Eleven swipes later, I had a bag which appeared, to the naked eye, to be sealed. I held it upside down and and three drips were located, each pouring out a steady stream of water. The parts that were actually sealed held water, but it proved that just because a bag looks sealed, it might not be airtight. By the time I made my 11 swipes, so much had been melted and torn off the bag that it was only about four inches high! Test result: FAILED.
But does it keep the food fresh?
I found that the frozen foods still got ice crystals in them and appeared much the same as when I just stick a clip on the item and put it in the freezer. I could see no real advantage to using it, since the possibility of error is high that you didn’t get an airtight seal, anyway.
For chips, it works wonderfully, but think about this…are you really going to mess with taking this gadget out and sealing the bag every time you sneak a handful of Cheetos? With all that commotion on a crinkly plastic bag, you are sure to attract the attention of the kids, which is exactly what you were trying to avoid in the first place and explains why you snuck around the corner and are eating them in the stairway. Not that the orange fingers were a dead give-away!
It sounds pretty handy when you consider that you can just hang it on the side of the refrigerator and use batteries with it. So quick and handy, right? Actually, that part proved to be a disappointment to me. When powered by batteries, I could barely get it to heat up and was useless as far as sealing. I reverted back to using the wall adapter.
Recommendation
I would save my money. Sure, the gadget works, but it takes time, patience and lots of practice to get it right. It is a neat concept, but the hassle factor was enormous and the results didn’t seem to be better than ordinary storage methods.
So much for another wonderful gadget “as seen on TV.”
Recommended:
No
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iowamommy
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Location: Iowa
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