The season of the bean

Dealing with the excess in a productive way

I went out and surveyed the various bean patches we have around the place and realised that we had to do something with the abundant over supply. We are growing two types of bean that are intended to be eaten green (rather than dried), a yellow butter bean and a dwarf bush green bean.

The main crop is growing in a new patch of garden that was converted from pasture last winter. The soil is reasonably good, with a little gravel, but the position is rather exposed to both wind and sun. Keeping water up has been a challenge as we do not have a lot go go around.

Our total haul for the day was about 2kg, which is not a lot but it will provide us with beans for probably 10 meals at a point when there are none out in the garden.

The process with to trim the pointy ends and stems and then dice the pods into bite sized pieces. This is the most time consuming part of the job.

Once the pile has been dealt with in this way you drop the chopped beans into a pot of boiling water for 3 minutes to blanch them. A step that many vegetables go through, for varying lengths of time, prior to freezing. After 3 minutes pour off the boiling water and replace with cold to bring the temperature back down.

As we wanted to have loose or free flow diced beans in a large freezer bag the contents of the pot were spread on a tray and placed in the freezer until things had started to crisp up. At that point (an hour or 2 should be plenty) they are tipped into the bag and given a shake.