Can you vacuum seal liquids?

Brad Putz • August 30, 2022

Liquid Control with Henkelman

If you have ever tried to vacuum package some sort of liquid, for example a soup or broth, you may have returned to the vacuum sealer to find liquid everywhere, but in the bag! This is due to the fact that liquid boils at lower temperatures as you reduce air in the chamber. It’s a fun experiment, to take a small cup of water, put into the chamber vacuum sealer and run a cycle. If your vacuum sealer has strong enough pump it will get to a full vacuum. Close to this point you will start to see the liquid boiling. Hit stop, once the lid opens, place the tip of your finger in the water……wow it’s still room temperature.

 

The challenge is how do you correctly and safely vacuum package liquids without having to stand over the chamber and watch and/or set the senor to a much lower vacuum. Well, the smart folks at https://www.henkelman.com/ added a liquid control sensor to their Boxer, Marlin, and Polar series vacuum sealers. This allows you to safely and easily vacuum package liquids without losing a drop. This sensor detects the onset of boiling liquids, and automatically moves to the next step. This feature keeps your chamber clean, and most importantly protects the vacuum pump. As liquid boils it will turn into a gas and that gas will be pulled from the chamber into the oil of the pump. If not maintained, over time the pump will corrode and will eventually fail. Henkelman’s liquid control feature prevents this from happening.


By Brad Putz August 23, 2022
Chef Michael Brewer, Executive Chef at Juneau Waterfront Restaurants gets the most out of his Henkelman CombiVAC to create this amazing dish. I've been using the CombiVac in quite a few applications but the one that is getting the most feedback is our Olive Oil Poached Halibut. First, I season a halibut fillet with a little kosher salt and rub with olive oil. I then place it in a vacuum bag and marinate the halibut using the "Marinate" feature on the Boxer 35. The halibut goes into the sous vide thermal circulator for 30 minutes at 135F (It can stay in longer but that’s a perfect medium rare and the fish does not get overcooked). The sauce is a flourless, dairy-less, miso-saffron veloute . We make this by bagging egg yolks in the Henkelman Boxer and cook them sous vide at 150F for 2 hours. They are chilled overnight, and then we whip olive oil into the yolks. This goes back into a bag and vacuumed to remove excess air. Chicken stock, miso, and saffron are brought to a boil and then placed in a VitaMix. While spinning the broth, we pipe the egg yolks into the blender giving us a rich sauce with plenty of foam. Diced stone fruit and tomatoes are the last part of the dish. After dicing the peaches, nectarines, plums, and tomatoes, we season with salt, sugar, and lemon juice. The mixture goes into a 1/6 pan and we vacuum to 97%. The soft air function allows us to not use a bag for this step. To plate, we spoon the veloute onto a plate, top it with the fish and garnish with the stone fruit tomato salad.
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