I don’t know about you, but our little garden did very well this year and we were blessed with lots of green beans. I canned quite a bit, and canning is ideal because they keep well this way and there is no worries about loosing food if the electric goes out.
However, we are huge fans of frozen green beans. They just taste so much better!
I took some photos of the relatively simple process and thought I would would share how to freeze fresh green beans today. 🙂
How to Freeze Fresh Green Beans:
Start out by preparing your beans. Sometimes we pick the small beans and just snap the ends off and freeze them whole, similar to how restaurants serve them. On this occasion Jason waited too long to pick them, so we snapped the ends off and broke the beans.
Then I did a double wash to get all the dirt and stuff off of them. The next part works best if you have a steamer pan. I don’t have one, but I do have a basket which kinda fits one of my pans. If you don’t have either, I’m sure a large slotted spoon would work.
I filled a pan with water and brought it to a boil. Once the water was boiling I put the steamer basket into the water and filled it with green beans.
With the beans in the boiling water I set a timer for 2 minutes. This blanches the beans enough to break down the starches so they don’t become icy in the freezer.
When the timer goes off I pull the steamer basket out of the water and use a slotted spoon to get the stragglers. Then I dump them into a sink of cold water. Sometimes I add icecubes to make it really cold.
Since I have a double sink I just clean the whole thing and fill both sides with cold water. That way I can put beans in both sides, especially when I’m doing a lot.
Once the beans have cooled off I scoop them out of the sink and onto a towel to dry.
In the past mother and I would freeze our beans in Ziploc freezer bags. They worked but the beans started getting freezer burnt after 5 or 6 months. Now we vacuum seal our green beans and they stay nice for over a year.
For the two of us, I usually put a glass 2 cup measure clear full into the bags and that makes one meal. We like our green beans!
And while we’re on the subject, my favorite way to fix frozen green beans is to put them in a skillet with a small amount of water. I cover and cook them until the bean are thawed and separated. Then I remove the lid and add butter, onion slivers and minced garlic and saute it. Yummy!
Growing up my mom always canned them. I tried freezing them once after I got married, but I didn’t blanch them first, I just froze them. Maybe that’s why we didn’t like them.
Thank you for the step by step guide.
Am trying this method..will follow up when we eat them.
Today I was given green beans from the garden and will be freezing them tomorrow. Thank you for this easy method. I plan to use these for Thanksgiving dinner so I will be using freezer bags. Will let you know if I run into any problems.
Thank you for sharing step by step , helped me a lot
Once the beans are dry I lay them out on cookie sheets and place in the freezer just long enough to be partially frozen then place them in freezer bags. They do not stick together and is easy to remove just the amount I want to use for that meal as I go. I do the same thing when I freeze blueberries I only clean and dry them though, works very well.
Basically a flash freeze then 🙂 I don’t because we eat so many beans it’s no issue at all to freeze them in larger amounts!
Do they still taste like fresh picked is the question? I want to freeze mine due to space issues… I have canned mine in the past and was given some frozen once and they tasted horrible but want them to taste like they are fresh out of the garden or at least not chewy in texture…
If you blanch them first, they taste very close to fresh. Not chewy but not soft like canned either. It’s hard to explain.
I’ve never been a big fan of boughten frozen green beans. The texture seems sort of rubbery to me. Do these get that texture?
No… I don’t usually notice that.