Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

Are there any experienced food dehydrators here? Specifically, I'm thinking of green beans. Every year about this time, the pole beans begin to bear heavily and I wind up canning in pint jars (about the right size serving for two) what we can't eat or give away. Only trouble is, as much as we love cooked fresh green beans, we're not all that fond of the over-cooked, canned version. So, how well do green beans dehydrate and then reconstitute later? I imagine I should make sure to dry only young, tender pods, maybe French slice them and blanch them first. Any advice? Is it a worthwhile experiment, or am I flat out wasting my time?

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

I've never done it with a dehydrator. I used to work in a history center where we did it the old-fashioned way, though. In the old days green beans were strung on strings and hung from the rafters to dry for future use. They called them "leather britches." It took a whole lot of simmering to make them edible.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

I love canned ones.....but then, this is the South, and green beans aren't cooked unless they've been on the stove for several hours with some pork fat. I suspect if you don't like canned ones, you REALLY won't like dried ones.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

And edible is the best you have to say for them? They weren't "good"?


When I cook green beans, I cook them roughly 10 minutes -- fork tender. I understand the pork fat part; I sometimes add bits of bacon to my green beans. I'm going to go ahead and try the dehydrator anyway as an experiment. I'll let you know.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

Andy, I was raised on canned green beans -- both commercial and home-canned. In a SHTF situation, I can eat canned green beans all day long and love them too. In the meantime, in this cheap energy, happy motoring world that we've lived in so long, the fresh green beans (which I greatly prefer) are available year round at the grocery store. So there I sit with the choice and the canned beans seem to linger on the pantry shelf. How long do they last, by the way?

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

Home canned ? Years and years......4-5 easy.

We made apple cider and apple sauce today.....squeezed out 5+ gallons of cider, canned 21 quarts of it and have about a gallon of fresh in the fridge. Did 10 pints of applesauce this evening. Pears tomorrow, and Monday, green beans and more applesauce.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

Andy, I am always so immensely impressed by you. I'm jealous of your life in the country and I wish I had all your skills and knowledge. Having said that, and while I remain a city boy at heart, I'd encourage anyone on the sidelines to get involved in gardening. I've only been at it four years now. But I've been amazed at the amount of food I get out of my little 162 square foot backyard plot. If I can do it, anyone can.

For instance, I planted a 12 foot row of pole beans and 18 square feet of bush beans in early July, and have been eating green beans nearly every day for two weeks now. I've given some away, canned 12 pints so far, and the end of the bean crop is nowhere in sight.

My Yukon Gold spring crop is stored in my cool basement in the dark and my summer crop of taters will be ready to dig in a few more weeks. I honestly don't see any reason I'll be buying potatoes at the grocery store for months and months. Based on my experience this year, the Yukon Golds I grew from spuds left over from last fall turned out every bit as good as the commercial seed potatoes. At the first sign that quality of my stored potatoes is beginning to deteriorate, I'll dehydrate them and store them in vacuum-sealed jars. They're great that way for scalloped potatoes.

My tomato and pepper plants aren't as productive as I'd like. But my garden gets limited sunlight (6 hours or less), so I guess I should be happy. Some years, there are failures. This year's onions (grown on the patio in window boxes) were not successful even though last year they turned out great. But on average, the garden gets better every year.

It's people like Andy who inspired me to take the plunge into gardening. The food is great; the fresh air and exercise are even better. Thank you, Andy, for setting such a great example for all the rest of us.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

You're quite welcome, Merlin. So glad your gardening experiences are turning out positive.....sounds like you put the effort into making it so. That knowledge, down the road, will be as valuable as any precious metal, I assure you.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

Blanch 'em and freeze. Yum.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

I freeze mine, or make soup and can that.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

We still make leather britches....I don't know or need any other method to preserve beans.

Work smart AND hard.....

No need to waste resources and time on this project imho.

(This of course is different from canning them)

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

Well, as luck would have it, the instructions for dehydrating green beans in the Ball Blue Book of Preserving calls for blanching them for 4-6 minutes and then freezing them for 30 minutes to tenderize.

But I don't own a chest freezer and all my freezer space is contained in the left side of my side-by-side refrigerator. So I really don't have space to store pounds upon pounds of frozen beans. That's why I was interested in dehydrating.

By the way, I just reconstituted the beans I dried last night. They returned to their original size, shape and color. Like every other food I've ever dried, the beans have lost their original texture; they're somewhat flabby and chewy. But the flavor is excellent.

I kind of likeThrifty Bob's suggestion about making soup and canning it. But I'm going to dehydrate some anyway. They'd be more versatile that way and I have some oxygen absorbers looking for useful work.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

I have the same problem, pole beans are starting to yield heavily.
We've pretty well been eating out of the garden since late May, early June. I dont try to can or freeze anything as its alot of work,
I know how do do canning and freezing...just too lazy!
I figure the summer $ savings (buy nothing but meat and dairy
in the summer) pays much of the commercial frozen/canned
the rest of the year.

We harvest radishes, spinach, sweet peas, lettuce, potatoes,
Peppers, turnips, kale, green beans, beets, sweet corn, tomatoes..etc
just enough for our own table and to give about half of everything
away. Basically, most of dinner comes directly from the garden
and is cooked within a half hour. Also...fruits and berry. Wild
blackberries are abundant in June, rasberries, gooseberries,
blueberries, apples and pears (coming in now). Hickory nuts
from the forest (get them before the squirrels do!)

We can maintain this until about mid October...then back to the supermarket!

As to Green Beans; my mother had a unique way to preserve
some of them....she canned them like dill pickles. Substitute
beans for cucumbers, put them up in vinegar and brine and
lots of dill. Real treat in the winter.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

And it doesn't require a pressure canner! Did she serve them cold as part of a relish tray?

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

Yes, put them out with a spread of cold cuts, cheese etc.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

They really didn't have any flavor, and they were a little on the tough side.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

Dehyrated green beans aren't very good as a side dish, but they can be OK mixed into something like a casserole. I opened a can from Walton Feed to test them out and found that they are kind of rubbery and have a cholorphyll taste. I think most people wouldn't find them very good compared to canned green beans, but they can be decent in certain recipes.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

The FD zuchinni is the same way. Rehydrates kind of slimey and rubbery, with a really strong taste. I don't like zuchinni anyway, but I bought a can to try it out as food for my greens-eating lizards. In the end I was afraid it was too rubbery for them and ended up tossing the stuff. It might have been okay in a casserole of some sort, and in a contest between starvation and zuchinni, the zuchinni would win, but ugh.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

I could happily survive solely on zucchini. Yum Yum. I think it tastes better when spelled correctly, too.:D

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

Can't spell it. Won't eat it. :D

Thanks!

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

I haven't got 'into' Growing my own yet, however I have a friend that does.. She grows a mountain of veggies of all kinds that sustains her through the winter.. Living in the North this is what she does..

Picks them cleans them makes sure they are dry and throws a selection in a supermarket bag, ties a bunny tail goes back out and buries them in the ground, leaving a little of the plastic bunny tail showing.. she then covers the area with straw..

Throughout the winter she has a endless supply of veggies that are good to go... all she does it go out kick the straw around a bit until she see's a tag and pulls up a bag of veggies...

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

North? North where? Here in NW Indiana, the veggie growing season (for beans at least) is rapidly growing to a close. Yet, it is nowhere near cold enough outside -- above or below ground -- to freeze and keep veggies. If I were to put a plastic bag with green beans in the ground now, they would just mold and rot. So, someone will have to give me more details on how to bury veggies in the ground instead of freezing them inside the house. I'm not doubting that it can be done some places and I would love to try. I just don't know how to make it work.

Oh, and for what it's worth, my leather britches are drying nicely -- shrinking and slowly turning brown. I bet they'll be really disgusting when they're finally dry. Is that how it's supposed to work? Should I have blanched them first? None of the instructions for making leather britches that I found on the Internet say anything about blanching. Maybe when I finally soak them and cook them with some pork fat, they'll be yummy anyway.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

If you like eating leather you'll love them! :D

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

There has to be some basis in fact for calling them "leather britches." I'm doing the leather britches as an experiment, although I suspect, at the end of the day, that I will prefer the green beans that I blanched and dried in an electric dehydrator. They weren't half bad.

I'm going to the store tomorrow to buy some fresh green beans (mine are now maturing in the garden for next year's seed) and I think I'll blanch them and start a second batch of leather britches. Blanching the beans before dehydrating them protects the color and the taste and tenderness too I bet.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

Merlin, I'm curious as to what varieties you grew.
I like old-fashioned bush "Blue Lake" best, and also "Kentucky Wonder" pole beans picked small, in terms of taste.
Some of the modern bush beans taste kinda grassy to me.

I don't dry green beans; no need, although I half-assedly did it once as an experiment. My climate allows me to grow greens in the winter months.

I would just let the beans dry on the plants, shuck them and store them as dried seeds.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

I'm growing Kentucky Wonder pole beans. They're a pain because of the need to erect trellises for them to grow on; but I prefer them because the fruit is born up in the air, far away from the dirt. I also grow Contender bush beans and they're close enough to the ground that they get dirty and rust real easily. But bush beans don't need articifial support.

Do you cook and eat your dried green bean seeds the same way you would more familiar dried beans (navy, lima, etc.)??? Can you use dried green bean seeds in the same way that you would, say, kidney beans or pinto beans?

By the way, I suspect that your overall production is greater if you eat the young beans when the pods are green and the seeds are small. If you let all of the pods mature, the plants won't continue to flower like they do if you pick the young pods. So, if you have a small garden, as I do, and want to maximize production, doesn't it make sense to pick the early fruit?

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

Part one of my experiment is complete. It has been four weeks since I prepared my leather britches on strings and hung them up to dry in a hall closet.

Today I rehydrated the ones that I had blanced. They have retained their green color (much like canned beans) and when simmered for maybe 30 minutes with a slice of bacon and a small onion, swelled back up to near their original size. That's absolutely remarkable since they had shriveled down to a fraction of their original size. They're tender, not like leather, and taste fine -- probably due to the bacon and onion :)

The other string of leather britches I prepared I did not blanch. They are now pale brown in color. Haven't cooked them yet; but I'll let you know. I would definitely do the blanched leather britches again in the future. Don't know how long they would keep. But, if I pack them in glass mason jars after they're completely dry, I bet it would be a long time. I like the fact that leather britches require so little energy to store.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

Thanks for the report. It's always good to learn what works.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

I like the Blue Lake Bush Beans also. The pods that get too big I just leave to dry on the bushes. Nothing like shucking a bucket of beans. Hahaha.:ok:

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

It's good for the soul :) And then the empty pods, dried vines and leaves all go onto the compost heap. My bean plants are hanging in the garage right now to finish drying.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

My experiment with leather britches is now complete. I cooked a bunch of dried green beans that I had not blanched and dried hanging on a string in the hall closet 4 months ago. I didn't have a ham bone to throw in the pot, so I added a couple of strips of cooked bacon and some ham soup starter to flavor the "pot likker." After simmering them for about 3 hours, I served them in a bowl over thick-sliced homemade bread with plenty of the liquid.

I tried SomeSilver's suggested and pickled some green beans with dill, vinegar and cayenne pepper. They were delicious.

In my view, they were edible (if not exactly good.) I much preferred the leather britches that I had blanched first. On balance, the blanching uses less energy because you don't have to simmer them for 3 hours to make them edible when you finally cook them. And the blanching preserves the color and overall quality of the green beans. If you're looking for an energy efficient way (compared to pressure canning) to preserve green beans until the middle of winter, dehydrating them is definitely a possibility.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

Sounds like you accidentally left out the garlic, whole black pepper, & sliced onions. Maybe next time!

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

I followed instructions off an Internet site. But the garlic, onions and whole black pepper sound good too. Definitely, next time :)

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

All -

Pickled green beans are addictive - don't forget the Coriander!

Plus all that good vinegar pot likker.

You really want to get an addiction?

Pickled asparagus.

Same deal, there's a ton of it there, then next week its gone.


scyth

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

Yuuuuuum. Pickled mushrooms, too. I've had both pickled together.
One of my favorite picklings is Okra. I absolutely love it and know plenty of people who do as well. Unfortunately, many people cannot get past the sliminess.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

I use an older model Even-Flow ten tray food drier, it works for me. Its much better built than the cheap plastic Excalibers sold all over the net. It runs a 1000 watt element and heavy duty Fasco fan. Makes quick work of the job but canned or frozen green beans beats the heck out of dried.

- JMO

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

Until energy is a serious deciding factor.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

Might I suggest adding a couple of them and a slice of crisp bacon to your next Bloody Mary? If'n you partake, that is.

Pickled okra is mighty fine in one, too.

I can & dehydrate green beans. I use the dehydrated in soups & stews, cook the canned with pork fat till tenderas a side dish. Each works well enough.

Canning and drying are the best for long term storage.

Freezing them is a little more labor intensive & I've had too many freezers putz out on me to trust to much food to them, especially something that cans as well as green beans.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

So is it safe to say that there is no way to have the fresh green bean taste without actually harvesting them off the vine?

I'm just asking for my tyrannical four-year-old who loves fresh (almost raw) green beans and can't type (or read) yet.

Re: Dehydrating your own garden green beans
 

Any form of preserving is going to alter the cellular structure of the vegetable. Frozen would be the closest as they are simply blanched before freezing and can be steamed or stir fried lightly to serve.