Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Eating and Drinking => Cooking, Storing and Preserving => Topic started by: heygrow on August 22, 2014, 20:36
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Getting to the glut stage and wondering what to do with them all. :ohmy:
My wife has made chutney and threatened to make soup. We tried a few years ago to freeze them and were not impressed with the results. So wondered if anyone has had success in a method of freezing that preserves some degree of original taste and texture?
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This works for me:
-Put freezer on superfreeze at leeat 6 hours before
-Chop beans
-Drop into rapidly boiling water (don't do a huge amount in a batch, the boiling water will become to cool)
-Put lid on pan, make sure heat is on full, to ensure quick return to the boil
-Time 3 minutes from immersing
-Drain, immediately refill pan of beans with cold water
-Swish beans in water
-Drain again, refill with cold water, then repeat for 3rd time
-Drain, dry beans on towel, or use salad spinner if you have one
-Lay beans on flat tray, stick in freezer for at least an hour
-Scrape into container or bag once frozen
They will never be as good as fresh but this technique will leave you reasonably edible beans, still packed with nutrients.
My main issue with this technique is getting a toasting off the wife for filling the freezer up! :tongue2:
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I've never been impressed with frozen runners :(
So I just enjoy them as a fabulous seasonal treat (as do ALL my friends and neighbours ;) )
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I freeze loads :D
just slice and bag and chuck in the freezer
the trick is not freezing them it's cooking them after freezing
always cook from frozen and add quarter of a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda in the water , it will make the water froth as it comes to the boil , but completely harmless - it helps keep the green colour in and takes away the chewiness , try a batch you have nothing to loose
infact bicarbonate works with most green veg ;)
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infact bicarbonate works with most green veg ;)
...but it destroys the B vitamins (chiefly thiamine and riboflavin) as well as the vitamin C.
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This works for me:
-Put freezer on superfreeze at leeat 6 hours before
-Chop beans
-Drop into rapidly boiling water (don't do a huge amount in a batch, the boiling water will become to cool)
-Put lid on pan, make sure heat is on full, to ensure quick return to the boil
-Time 3 minutes from immersing
-Drain, immediately refill pan of beans with cold water
-Swish beans in water
-Drain again, refill with cold water, then repeat for 3rd time
-Drain, dry beans on towel, or use salad spinner if you have one
-Lay beans on flat tray, stick in freezer for at least an hour
-Scrape into container or bag once frozen
They will never be as good as fresh but this technique will leave you reasonably edible beans, still packed with nutrients.
My main issue with this technique is getting a toasting off the wife for filling the freezer up! :tongue2:
My method is similar.. here are the variations (note we have a vacuum machine for preserving in the freezer)
- Time 2 minutes from immersing
- after drying, put required amount of beans (200g = 2 adult portions for us) in vacuum bag
- place bags in freezer for 1 hour then suck & seal.
Means no freezer burn, and beans that taste as good as new when you eat them throughout the year (we then defrost, and steam for c.6 minutes)
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slicing the beans lengthways is better than slicing them across. they cook quicker with less damage after freezing
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I throw away the later leathery pods and freeze the beans. Lovely.
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Lets be fair. Its a lot of faff and they do spoil quite a bit in the freezer.here is my method: pick beans, slice with bean slicer, chop to required length, put layer of salt in bottom of a sweet jar, add an inch layer of beans, add another layer of salt to cover well. Repeat till you run out of beans or the jar is full. Keep in dark place. I stand mine in a bin liner. Sorted. Very quick, taste like the fresh beans when thoroughly swilled, even a year later. Try a batch and compare with your frozen ones in a few months time. You will be pleasantly surprised.
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I've never been impressed with frozen runners :(
So I just enjoy them as a fabulous seasonal treat (as do ALL my friends and neighbours ;) )
Same for myself !
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I think it also depends on the variety of bean being frozen. I never had much success in the past, but since growing Moonlight, I've found the frozen beans much better. I just chop, bag and sling them in the freezer. Cook from frozen - always into rapidly boiling, salted water. Cook rapidly with the lid off. Not as good as fresh, but infinitely better than I've had in the past.
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Thanks to all for the variety of ideas. Steve Harford's is one I had not considered and may give a try to see what results I get.
Seems like the consensus on freezing is that you need to dry well after blanching and quick freeze and get all the air out of the sealed bags.
I agree the with those who take the easy route and just enjoy fresh with family and friends getting to do the same.
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Steve, Can I just clarify your salting method. You don't blanch them, just slice and cut before putting into the jar?
I guess they would need to be cut quite short to lie flat in the jar then?
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hi Heygrow. thats right i dont blanch. No need. i dont even wash them! :-) straight off the plant, top them and slice, then cut usually into three. They then fit into a large sweet jar, nicely. Im talking about the big ones on shelves at the back of proper sweet shops. Oh and every now and then, while filling, i put my hand in and press them down a bit. Check after a month or so to make sure that the very top layer is still covered in salt.
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Ewwww frozen beans. Yuck. I would rather be beanless.
Do people not find they go soft. I like a bite to my bean
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yep. I agree BQ. soft and tasteless
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Yes, I like my runner beans to squeek when I chew them :lol:
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I've always detested frozen beans, but out here we don't really get fresh veg all year round like the UK unless you go to the big supermarkets in the big towns, and even then it's very limited. So the choices were bottled or frozen. The only bottled ones I like are either pickled or tomatoes so frozen it is. I will just have to get to like them, like I did frozen courgettes last year. I am certainly not going to the supermarkets.
Tried salting french beans last year but didn't trust myself. Also sauerkraut, which got forgotten when the builders were here and I didn't trust that either. Will try again this year.
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Yes, I like my runner beans to squeek when I chew them :lol:
I never realised they squeaked for other people, I was always afraid to ask incase people thought i was daft. :lol:
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Yes, I like my runner beans to squeek when I chew them :lol:
I never realised they squeaked for other people, I was always afraid to ask incase people thought i was daft. :lol:
I like my runners to squeak a bit but not as much as squeaky beans (french) which i am not fond of . ::)
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At our house we call French beans squeaky beans & runners fighting up beans :lol:. I make a runner bean Italien recipe, you cook finely chopped onions with runners sliced & fresh tomatoes with garlic & seasoning, lovely with roasts etc or pasta,as a side dish, freezes well too.
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Ewwww frozen beans. Yuck. I would rather be beanless.
Do people not find they go soft. I like a bite to my bean
I blanch mine for only two minutes and open freeze before bagging as others do.
I cook from frozen, straight into boiling water and cook only for three minutes. They are perfectly good, as long as, of course, you use decent beans and not the old beany tough ones :lol:
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Steve, are the jars you use glass or plastic. The glass jars are very expensive.
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hi heygrow i use the plastic ones. i think i paid about a quid each from the sweet shop, but couldnt resist spending a tenner on pear drops and spearmint chews while i was there. I love sweets :-)
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Well I have followed Steve's instructions. I have noticed that the ones at the bottom have let out quite a bit of liquid, so they are sitting in about an inch of water in the jar. Do you think they will be OK?
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So I just enjoy them as a fabulous seasonal treat (as do ALL my friends and neighbours ;) )
We grow for maximum flavour (not yield etc.) and freeze almost nothing, choosing to eat with the seasons instead. Pipe-dream during the Hungry Gap, but we manage OK for the other 10-or-so months of the year.
We are also not very organised, so for us we would be finding unused packets of beans in the bottom of the freezer years after the fact ...
I wonder what the cost-benefit equation of freezing beans, and the like, is?
Even assuming that the time taken is ignored (as is my time for sowing, planting, weeding and harvesting) I wonder what the cost of boiling blanch water, freezer on Boost, and [say] 6 months electricity running the freezer is? Perhaps its next-to-nothing, I just have no feel for whether it is even a measurable cost.
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The freezer is on all year anyway (fridge/freezer) - so it makes sense to fill it up with home grown veg ;)
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Well I have followed Steve's instructions. I have noticed that the ones at the bottom have let out quite a bit of liquid, so they are sitting in about an inch of water in the jar. Do you think they will be OK?
Glad you asked that as i have just done a jar and wondered whst the run off would be like.
Brine is a good preservative but i do not know if it is best to remove it .
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I cant imagine it being a problem although Ive never noticed it happening with mine. did you start with a good layer of salt in the bottom? And maybe you needed to be adding more salt than you were doing as you filled the jar? I completely cover each layer of beans so that none show above the salt. Any moisture I get is gloopy salty stuff. not runny at all.
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I have never done them this way Steve. May give it a go if there are enough runners left. Ours are tailing off at the moment.
We tend to eat the runner beans fresh. We don't like frozen runners.
I do freeze the French beans tho', to see us through the hungry gap. They are not as good as fresh but are OK.
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We are in the process of blanching a load of runners picked from PIL garden today, I've never had a problem with blanching, freezing and then eating them. Prefer French beans though but ours this year were absolutely pathetic.
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Well worth it Mrs Bee. In fact, having just washed and bagged up some more damsons I have picked half a basket of runners and noticed that mine are slowing down too. I was picking well into October last year but I cant see it happening this. In line with all my other produce this year. Anyway I was about to salt some more beans and found that I hadnt any sweet jars left. One is still half full of last years beans. I can feel a big order of pear drops coming on !
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Steve, Don't know how you managed to cover each layer with salt completely. When I put the beans in I did not line them all up neatly, but they lay across each other to some degree. Therefore the salt tended to fall through the gaps a fair bit. I got quite a lot of salt in there. Anyway I'll just have to see how they get on. It's a bit of an experiment with one jar for now.
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ah now I do. Once sliced With a bean slicer I simply lie them
on the board all in the same direction and cut across the whole bunch. I can then pick them up in bundles place them in the jar directly on top of each other. If there is a gap at the end I then put a few crossways to fill the gap. ( hope Im making sense here!). That way there is very little space between them. Im sure yours will be ok its just thats the way I have always done them. You will probably find that the water in the bottom will disappear once they have settled in.
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Also dont be afraid of putting too much salt in as it will fill any air voids. If you like I will take a pic of mine to give you an idea.
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Also dont be afraid of putting too much salt in as it will fill any air voids. If you like I will take a pic of mine to give you an idea.
Yes please. :)
Do you use the fine kitchen salt or the granular sea salt?
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I just use the cheapest I can find. most if not all if it will be swilled out when preparing them to eat anyway. In fact I have often flushed mine so much I have added back salt to taste.
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Here we are. Just taken polythene off and there is a little water at the top.I might need to add more salt at some stage but anyway thats what mine look like
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Thanks for that Steve. :)
May try that if there are any runner beans still left when we get back from hols.
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Just used some frozen, un-blanched runners in some veg soup and they were nice. Only been in the freezer a month so they may toughen up. I will be happy if they stay the way they are, surprisingly acceptable if the only alternative is cabbage and more cabbage in winter.