Freezing Fresh Green Beans

A few weeks ago I had a mountain of green beans come in from the garden. These plants had been growing since before Hubby & I bought the house and I’m quite surprised at how much they’re still producing. Hubby isn't a huge fan of green beans, but he will eat them if I fix them up good with bacon grease and a little salt.

Having so many green beans was a little stressful. I had discovered, when looking for a canning recipe for green beans, that you have to use a pressure canner and I don’t have one of those so canning them was not going to be an option at this point. My next thought was to cook them and eat them…and we cooked some and ate them, but there was still a mountain left. Finally I thought about freezing them…and this is what I did:

The green beans had been sitting on my dining room table for probably two days and I knew I needed to do something with them soon before they went bad. Finally one day I sat down and started snapping off the ends of the green beans. I had three piles: one of raw green beans, one of the ends and pieces to compost, and one of the green beans without ends which had been snapped in half (and the longer ones in thirds). Once this time consuming process was finished I rinsed the good parts of the green beans to remove any dirt. I then measured them into quart size freezer bags and labeled them with what they were (even though I doubt I’d forget that) and the date they were processed into the bags.

I ended up with about 2 quarts of green beans when all that was done. It sure felt like a lot of work for such a small outcome. The two bags are now in my freezer waiting for the next time I want to fix green beans. If I get more green beans out of the garden I plan to repeat this same process so that they don’t go to waste.

You might remember this post I wrote in July about working towards having healthier foods and the "Real Food" Journey. Growing and freezing your own green beans is a great way to have healthy food without the added things store-bought frozen green beans or even a can of green beans would have in it.