Yellow beans are a popular salad ingredient. Their taste is fine and delicate, the pips larger and stronger than other varieties. Fresh from the garden, the excess harvest can go into the freezer.

Yellow beans are often blanched and frozen

Wash yellow beans

The freshly harvested yellow bean pods can be kept refrigerated for a few days. However, if they're going to be frozen, get them into the freezer the same day if possible. Freezing requires a lot of preparatory work:

  • discard rotten and damaged beans
  • Wash beans thoroughly under running water
  • remove both ends of each sleeve
  • If necessary, break or cut the beans into bite-sized pieces

Raw, blanched or cooked?

Yellow beans can be frozen raw, blanched or cooked. All three methods have their advantages. It is true that raw beans are poisonous due to the ingredient phasin and only cooking renders this substance harmless. But when the beans are cooked before consumption is irrelevant.

Freeze raw yellow beans

Freezing raw beans initially saves time because there is no need for time-consuming blanching. The cleaned and cut beans are packed in freezer containers and go directly into the freezer. This method has disadvantages, but not everyone finds them annoying:

  • their beautiful color loses intensity
  • they get a little limp

Blanch the beans beforehand

Blanching saves the color and also the firmness of the bean pods. If large quantities have to be frozen, it is time-consuming work. You can only work in portions, as too much water cools down the boiling water and disrupts the “rapid” blanching process.

The beans are first boiled in salted water for about three minutes, then removed with a ladle and placed in a bowl of cold water to cool.

Cool and well drained beans are packed in portions in freezer boxes or bags and deep-frozen.

Cook the beans ready to eat

When beans come cold in a salad after thawing, you can take the prep one step further. Instead of just blanching them, you can cook them a few minutes longer until they're edible. The cooking time depends on the thickness of the bean pods. Usually about 8 to 10 minutes is to be expected.

tips

Try a piece of bean in between to make sure you get the right cooking point.

durability and reuse

Yellow beans have a shelf life of about nine months. The prerequisite for this is that they are continuously stored at minus 18 degrees Celsius.

Frozen beans can be added to hot dishes. How long they need to continue cooking depends on whether they were frozen raw, blanched, or fully cooked.

Only cooked beans may be used for salads. If the frozen beans were not fully cooked before freezing, they will need to be further cooked after thawing. Only then can they enrich the salad.

The garden journal freshness ABC

How can fruit and vegetables be stored correctly so that they stay fresh for as long as possible?

The garden journal freshness ABC as a poster:

  • as a free PDF file to print out yourself

Category:

Vegetable garden