Gifted with beans... lots and lots (and lots) of beans.
Last night a family member came over and dropped off a huge crate of... green beans.
They were leftover from a church donation thing of some sort but they weren't really useable because they had 'lived' in the crate for a few more days than they should have, they were starting to go bad.
Ok - Most were past 'starting' to go bad; and about half were pretty gross. But others were just fine. It would just be a pretty time consuming task to go through them all. The family member (and apparently no one else of the 10 or so people who had a chance to take the beans before they made their way to me) were up to it.
Ok - Most were past 'starting' to go bad; and about half were pretty gross. But others were just fine. It would just be a pretty time consuming task to go through them all. The family member (and apparently no one else of the 10 or so people who had a chance to take the beans before they made their way to me) were up to it.
I don't like to waste anything so around 6:00 I turned on the music app on my phone and got to work painstakingly going through the crate of beans. I had two grocery store bags full of unacceptable (read: gross) green beans but I ended up with a nice amount left.
Although I had originally thought I'd pressure can them - I really didn't have enough to go through the hassle of getting it all out and it was already about 8:00 pm by this point so I just decided to freeze them.
To freeze green beans
Pick through your fresh green beans, remove those with rust, fungus, etc.
Wash them in cold water.
Snap or snip off the ends. Leave whole or snap/snip in half.
Bring a large pot of water to boil on the stove.
Prepare a large bowl with cold water and ice in it.
Submerge an amount green beans into the boiling water.
The amount needs to be not so large that it would stop the water boiling. You want a constant boil.
Work in batches.
Boil the green beans for 3 minutes and remove promptly.
Submerge or dump the green beans into the ice water to stop the cooking process.
Swirl them a bit with your hands or a spoon to evenly cool, then remove to another bowl.
Repeat until all the beans are finished, adding fresh ice as needed to keep the water cold.
Wash them in cold water.
Snap or snip off the ends. Leave whole or snap/snip in half.
Bring a large pot of water to boil on the stove.
Prepare a large bowl with cold water and ice in it.
Submerge an amount green beans into the boiling water.
The amount needs to be not so large that it would stop the water boiling. You want a constant boil.
Work in batches.
Boil the green beans for 3 minutes and remove promptly.
Submerge or dump the green beans into the ice water to stop the cooking process.
Swirl them a bit with your hands or a spoon to evenly cool, then remove to another bowl.
Repeat until all the beans are finished, adding fresh ice as needed to keep the water cold.
Place the amount of beans you wish into your freezer container of choice.
Freeze.
Cooling down quickly to stop the cooking process
Ready to put into freezer containers
I did not plan to do a post on this so I didn't take any more photos and didn't take a picture of the finished products last night. I simply went to bed. But I did have the above photos on my phone as I had sent them to a family member while I was doing it.
So I quickly went to the freezer just now, grabbed two of the bags out and took a picture! Ha ha.
The white at the tops of the bags are paper towels. When I food seal anything with moisture
I add paper towels in the bags prior to sealing to catch the moisture before the vacuum process.
I got about 5 1/2 lbs. of 'useable' green beans from the crate.
