If we’re lucky, many of us end up with tons of green beans. My bush beans are starting to wind up their season and the pole beans are still going fairly strong. For me, it’s time to think about preserving some of the bounty!
Canning can be scary to the uninitiated, but freezing is simple and can be done with a lot of your garden veggies. Beans are the perfect candidate.
Step 1: Cut the ends off.
Step 2: Cut the beans into your favorite size.
Step 3: Blanch them in boiling water for about 3 minutes. (This is a necessary step because it will eliminate the normal aging enzymes etc. in the beans.)
Step 4: Cool them quickly in water and ice.
Step 5: Dry them off.
Step 6: Into a freezer bag. Freeze.
They will keep longer in a deep freeze, but 8 or 9 months in a normal freezer will work too. They don’t go bad, they just might not taste as good after longer. When you are ready to cook them, just do what you normally would with frozen beans – microwave for a minute or two or boil or steam or whatever…
Filed under: beans , how to freeze green beans, pictures of freezing green beans, preserving green beans
Thanks for the tip! I love fresh beans and that is a great way to have veggies from the garden long after the season has ended.
You must have read my mind because I have been thinking about freezing the green beans that are starting to come on strong in my garden! Thanks for the step by step instructions. I had to laugh when I saw the picture of the green beans in their ice bath as it brought back memories of when I was a child and my mom would do the same to broccoli. I hated it when she did that as it would make the whole house stink! Thank goodness green beans smell much nicer.
I think that my wife is glad that I’m not mass cooking beets for the same broccoli stinky reason you mention Cindy! She is not a fan…
I love your photo essay on freezing beans!!! We’ve been eating mass quantities of mixed green and yellow wax beans at every opportunity and haven’t even started to get tired of them; we don’t have a freezer, so our goal is to eat ‘em all fresh (except for making some jars of dilly beans). But if we ever *do* get a freezer, I’m coming back to this post! And what do you mean, beets smell bad?! I was just about to roast a whole panful prior to peeling and slicing them. A bit earthy, maybe. But bad? Yikes!
Compostings Reply: Oh.. I am a guy who loves the smell of beets! But my wife, my son.. the dog, the neighbors.. they all seem to hate it. I think that it’s the smell of life! And not a stinky life either!
I never knew why you needed to blanch things before you froze them. Thanks for the explanation. Hmm, I guess I’ll have to check on those mixed greens I froze raw in spring…
Now there’s something I should definitely be freezing… greens.
Appreciate your instructions!! Going to put them to work today!!
My pleasure! Happy you came to the blog…
Thanks for the pictorial example- Great! One qiestion- How dry do they have to be before you put them in the freezer bags? How do YOU dry them?
regards
Tony t
An excellent question! In this particular example i pat dried the beans after coming out of the cooling bath. Moisture remained, but not too much. Since we aren’t flash freezing, you can get some ice chunks. Pat dried beans should elimiante most of the water and limit the chunks.