Cool Hunting

Bulky design, fussy mechanisms and the trickiness involved in resealing the bags offsets the glory of vacuum sealers' ability to keep our precious Roquefort, pineapples, mushrooms and the like at their freshest. In steps Oliso's Frisper Freshkeeper to the rescue. With its compact egg-shaped design, stupid simple operation and bags that open and reseal almost effortlessly, the Frisper solves all the problems of your grandma's vacuum sealer and then some.

Its patent-pending technology makes sure that it works quickly and powerfully to suck the air out of the specially designed bags. Unlike other models that require alignment with the entire edge of the bag, the device seals along predesignated spots making it easy to position. The modification means that the Frisper is about a quarter of the size of other sealers, not much larger than a person's hand—something that those of us who store their vacuum sealer in the basement, unused, are pretty stoked on. It's great when reinvention improves on usability, but better yet when it makes it useful at all.

The other key innovation is the bags themselves, called Vac-Snaps. Oliso's system replaces the sealing edge with a zip top closure, which not only facilitates the easy sealing process but makes them far easier to reopen (without the need of scissors and knives) on the fly. Made of a multi-layer material, they can be reused (though not for meats) and microwaved or simmered for reheating.

The Frisper is $100 from Oliso (or use their store locator) and comes with five each of the Vac-Snap quart and gallon size bags. Replacement packs will set you back $12 for packs of 20 and 14 respectively.