Green Beans
Tender young beans come in many different shapes and colors and are high in protein. Enjoy all summer long both raw and cooked for filling stir-fries, salads, soups, and pickles.
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How to Cook with Green Beans
Green Beans are a pretty common vegetable that we grow up eating, but if you’re looking to jazz up green beans in the kitchen, there are so many different varieties to explore and even more ways to enjoy them! From simple green beans to pink speckled Dragon’s Lingerie, to rich flat Romano beans and waxy yellows, there are so many beautiful beans in this world to appreciate. Stir Fry with tamari for a Sticky Garlic Tamari Green Bean served with rice, eggs, and kimchi, simply toss into a rich chicken soup, pickle and enjoy for later, slice up raw into a salad, the possibilities are endless! And if you’ve got kiddos or even just friends, snapping the stems off the beans is a great group activity for anyone looking to help out in the kitchen.
Are Green Beans Nutritious?
Like their cousin the sugar snap pea, green beans are a legume and are high in protein, making them a super filling vegetable to add into any stir-fry or salad.
How to Preserve Green Beans
If you’re into home-canning and fermentation, green beans are pretty simple vegetables to process. To pickle, you can do a lacto-fermentation process (learn more from Sandor Katz’ website and book, The Art of Fermentation) or you can make a simple brine with vinegar, honey, and spices and keep in jars in the fridge for crunchy fresh pickled green beans all winter long. Green beans also freeze great, simply snap the stems off, give them a quick blanch in boiling water, let them cool, then freeze in ziplock bags.
Is it Easy to Grow Green Beans?
As far as growing grows, beans are nitrogen-fixing and are pretty low maintenance crops that’ll produce lots of vines and pods if you let them. Harvest, however, is pretty labor intensive! To be able to harvest nice, young, tender green beans before they get too thick, you have to run through the patch at least two or three times a week, capturing the pods right when they’re at the perfect size. Due to their small size, it takes a lot of time to fill up a big box of green beans, making them one of the more expensive crops to harvest. We’re super grateful our farmers work so hard to grow this precious crop for us!
