I found a vacuum sealer and wanted to use it to help preserve a bear that was killed by a coyote but I cant [A]ctivate it and it doesn’t appear to be used in any recopies that my char knows
this also brings up the question of how do you cook many food items? i always find canned raviolis or tuna but cant cook it, same deal with frozen pizza’s (and they go bad fairly quickly so it would be nice to know how to cook them)
Vacuum sealers are automatically used in the recipes that require them (similar to a hotplate).
Both of those are already cooked (though you can still warm them if you want to). The canned ravioli is pre-cooked ravioli in a can, and the veggie/meat pizza is what you would get if someone ordered a pizza and then put it in the refrigerator. Both are fine to eat without any additional cooking.
Similarly most canned things don’t require any cooking also.
Vaccuum-sealing recipes show up at Cooking 3 or 4, I believe. You’re better off either canning the meat or just making jerky though as the vacc meat is basically “make jerky, then bag it up”.
Cans of X are generally eaten raw. (Probably should be heatable though.)
Pizzas aren’t actually frozen: they were made and held for leftovers pre-Cata. Agreed that they tend to go bad in a hurry.
As mentioned in a previous thread:
jerky: total nutrition 36, total quench -9, total morale +12; it never goes bad, 3 servings
canned meat: total nutrition 50, total quench 0, total morale +2; goes bad 40 hours after opened, 1 serving
vacuumed meat: total nutrition 50, total quench -10, total morale +4; goes bad 48 hours after opened, 2 servings
So if your goal is food storage then either canning or vacuum sealing work about the same. If you are looking for morale then it’s best to make jerky.
OK, fine, Jerky has less nutritional value. I was speaking in terms of recipe requirements–input, not output. Last I checked, vacuum meat requires the same ingredients as jerky, but then the sealer & bag as well.
If I’m gonna burn salt (a surprisingly finite resource if you don’t have access to Labs, IME, and even then it isn’t limitless), my experience with plastic bags of food is that they take up a surprising amount of volume. I can carry 40+ Beef Jerky without noticeable impact on my volume or weight, though.
So, I’d suggest looking for Glass Jars and canning Meat, since even Clean Water is much easier to come by than salt, and firewood usually isn’t that difficult to get.
Cans of X are generally eaten raw. (Probably should be heatable though.)
I’ve applied heat packs I’ve found independent of their MRE’s, yes you can heat them up.
[quote=“Pthalocy, post:7, topic:1566”]
Cans of X are generally eaten raw. (Probably should be heatable though.)
I’ve applied heat packs I’ve found independent of their MRE’s, yes you can heat them up.[/quote]
And for those of us not familiar with heatpacks being associated with MREs? (I thought it was a sports thing.) I’d want to heat canned stuff in a Pot.
I thought self-heating meant there was white prosperous or something like that inside the meal, and when it was exposed to air the food would heat up due to the prosperous burning away in the air.
Uh, putting white phosphorous in packaged food like that seems like it would be pretty dangerous…
Here is how you use a vacuum sealer:
Mini success as I learned to use the /URL feature on the forums and trolled all in the same post.
And for those of us not familiar with heatpacks being associated with MREs? (I thought it was a sports thing.) I'd want to heat canned stuff in a Pot.
Yeah, admittedly it does describe them in game as those heat thingies for sports injuries. Bit misleading since I’ve had no success applying them to myself when cold. I made the connection to MRE’s because I almost always find both on dead military guys, in addition to previous knowledge.
Meh, I imagine a cloth weave packet inside a clear plastic packet.
Basically it heats up when exposed to air.