Awhile ago I bought a broken Vacmaster VP215 for cheap. I managed to get the thing to stop blowing up starter capacitors and I've been goofing around with it a bit.

The experiments I've been doing don't require such an expensive device. I notice that there are vacuum marinade chamber attachments for Foodsaver, external bag type devices that are a lot cheaper that could be used as an economical alternative for a chamber vacuum sealer. To be honest, it would probably be a better idea to experiment with an external vacuum sealer instead of polluting your vacuum pump with food aerosols.

Anyhow, I've been intrigued with a boiling point depression trick that can be done by dropping air pressure. Basically water boils at a lower temperature at lower pressure. I figured that this could be a useful effect for desiccating things like candied lime slices.

It sure does work. When I put in still hot candied lime slices in the chamber and draw a vacuum I can get the things to dry out hard much faster. I have to turn off the main switch to the sealer before it fires the sealer band and relieves vacuum, but it does maintain vacuum when I turn the thing off before it goes into the sealing cycle.

I was disappointed that my chocolate chip cookies were sagging on the cooling rack. I surmised that they were collapsing as they cooled and their steam collapsed back to liquid into a soggy sadder cookie. They lost their high puffiness fairly quickly so I put several still hot cookies into the chamber for about 3min.

It was cool to see surface bubbling still occurring in the cookies through the transparent cover. It looked like water was continuing to evaporate in the evacuated atmosphere. The really neat bit was that the cookies maintained their puffiness and developed a thin crunchy exterior that enveloped a still warm soft center. Fresh baked evacuated cookies turned out to be really excellent.

Is anyone else messing around with vacuum evaporation tricks? At the risk of generalizing my post, does anyone else want to share an off the wall experiment that isn't vacuum related?