Beans are a versatile and rewarding vegetable. Green beans are best preserved by pickling, but pickling the kernels can also be a handy way to dry the legumes.

If you have too many beans, you can easily boil them down and keep them for a long time

Shredded beans: Soak the green beans in sour

Sour pickling is a very old preservation method: like sauerkraut, for example, green beans can be preserved by lactic acid fermentation. The product is very healthy and rich in vitamins and can be kept for a whole year.

  1. Wash the bean pods, remove both ends and cut the beans into pieces about an inch long.
  2. Mix the pieces of beans with plenty of salt and let them steep for an hour.
  3. Press the beans into sterile jars with great force to prevent air pockets. The juice from the beans should come out and cover the vegetables.
  4. Cover the jars loosely with a lid to allow gases to escape and store in the dark. Mason jars with a rubber ring or earthenware pots are ideal. The beans now ferment within about four weeks through lactic acid fermentation.
  5. Since raw beans, even if they are fermented, contain the poisonous phasin, you have to heat the beans before eating them.

Boil beans

An alternative to pickling green beans is to boil them in salt water or vinegar water. Beans can also be pickled in this way. However, these should be cooked before pickling. The beans processed according to the following recipe also have a shelf life of one year and can be used immediately if required without heating.

  1. Clean the beans by washing them, cutting off both ends and, if necessary, removing the thread or by removing the kernels from the pods.
  2. For beans: Boil the legumes in salted water for 10 minutes.
  3. Fill the green beans close together vertically in sterile jars or add the cooled bean seeds.
  4. Boil plenty of water, dissolve salt in it and let the brew cool down again. Alternatively, you can also use vinegar diluted with water (2:1) and dissolve some sugar in it.
  5. Fill the glasses completely with the brew.
  6. Boil the filled jars for two hours at 120 °C either in the oven (in the dripping pan filled with water) or in a saucepan.

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