Vacu Vin Vacuum Instant Marinater Editorial Review: You're having a few friends over for grilled steaks, you've got the salads made, the wine chilling and are just about to fire up the grill when suddenly you realize you never put the meat in to marinate. If you had the Vacu Vin Instant Marinater you'd be right on schedule, as opposed to hyperventilating. All it takes is five measly minutes for this incredible tool to open up the pores and fibers of the food, tenderizing and marinating simultaneously.
Customer Reviews: It Stinks--Don't purchase Purchased this item and tried it out. It worked pretty good the first few times and then stopped working--suction died--top collapsed--another aggrevating piece of garbage, Please stay away and don't be dupped. All I can say is "WHAT A WASTE OF MY TIME AND MONEY"---DON'T BUY
This thing will implode! I really liked the Vacu Vin. I used it a lot and found that if you pierced the meat with a fork before you added the marinade and pulled the vacuum that it worked great. Then one night I was marinating chicken in Italian dressing. I pulled the vacuum and then boom! I (and the kitchen) were covered with chicken and Italian dressing. Took a hour to clean up the mess. I think I probably pumped it too much and pulled too much of a vacuum. The instructions should really warn customers about this. I'd like to purchase another but I'm a bit shelled shocked at the moment.
(I don't think the cat will ever return to the kitchen if he sees another one!)
Vacu-vin problems Great idea, but it really doesn't matter since we can't get the vacuum to release so we can cook the steaks before our 5 guests get here. The instructions don't tell you what to do in case this happens, so our meat is marinated, the grill is hot, but we have no meat available to grill!
Very frustrating! Reg G.
Well, it WAS great... ...until it broke. It cracked under it's own pressure. My husband really liked this and it worked well for last minute marinating (not that it can replace hours of marinating), until he was pumping it one day and it wouldn't seal - then we realized the lid had cracked. Am I the only one this has happened to?
A Cautionary Note I think that when you pull "too strong" a vacuum and then put the INSTANT MARINATER into the REFRIGERATOR, the container IMPLODES. I believe what happened was that the volume of what little air was left in the Instant marinater "shrunk" due to the colder temperature of the refrigerator, increased the strength of the vacuum and that the sides of the container were not strong enough to withstand the forces.
Or maybe it was because there were some scratches on the surface of the container that was enough to sufficiently weaken the container wall. I was cleaning the item with a soft sponge and non-abrasive liquid dishwashing soap.Before this incident, I had done the same as above (meat into Instant Marinader, pulled vacuum and put in refrigerator) without any problems.
I think this item has a nice concept, but that the materials could have been stronger. Another idea would be to have some sort of mechanism to prevent "too strong" of a vacuum pull.