Freezing green beans

I mentioned earlier today that I harvested some green beans. After a quick Google of directions on freezing green beans I discovered several sites with instructions for taking care of the process. It was relatively quick and easy and completely painless!

Step One: Harvest the green beans.

Done. Though I must admit there's not much to them.

Hope my honey isn't too hungry

Step Two: Clean and cut up green beans

I combined these steps because I only took one picture. :) Rinse your harvested green beans in cool water. Cut your cleaned beans into your desired length. I got maybe one serving out of the handful of green beans I harvested. That's after I culled two green beans because they were kinda soggy and off color. But I was able to get the seeds out of them.

SFGing will certainly help you stick to a diet.

Green bean seeds - almost enough to fill a square

Step Three: Blanch the green beans.

Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil. Put green beans into pot and boil for 3 minutes.

My pot of water didn't even stop boiling when I dropped in the beans.

I had to laugh when the instructions said I could reuse the water for subsequent batches of beans. As if!

Step Four: Cool beans in ice water

After 3 mintues use a slotted spoon to fish your beans out of the boiling water and put them directly into a bowl of ice cold water for three minutes. Add more ice if necessary.

Yes, it literally needs to be ice cold

Leave in ice water three minutes

Step Five: Drain beans and put into freezer bags.

Drain the water off the beans. I fished out the ice then poured the remaining water and beans into a strainer. The directions I found didn't say anything about patting the beans dry, but I did use a napkin to pick them up. That removed some moisture but not all. I squeezed as much air out of the freezer bag as I could, but it still had quite a bit of air in it, so I used a straw to "vacuum seal" it. Thankfully no green beans got lodged in the straw!

The instructions recommended putting the beans on the quick freeze shelf of the freezer, but I don't have one of those, so I just trotted the beans out to the deep freeze. Sorry no pics of that because it's outside and really dirty!

In the bag you go little green beans.

"Vacuum sealed" and ready for the deep freeze

Now I'm off to Google "Saving green bean seeds"

References

Green Beans n More - How to freeze fresh green beans
Pick Your Own - How to freeze green beans and other beans