Freezing Fresh Green Beans

It's so easy to prep and freeze your own fresh green beans at home! Start with Fresh Green Beans from your garden or Farmer's Market.

Use a "Frenching Tool" to French-cut the green beans

  

All Frenched and ready to blanch.

Boil some water with 1 tsp. salt

Add beans and blanch for three (3) minutes

(All fruits and vegetables contain enzymes and bacteria that, over time, break down the destroy nutrients and change the color, flavor, and texture of food during frozen storage. Green beans require a brief heat treatment, called blanching, in boiling water or steam, to destroy the enzymes before freezing. Blanching times for beans is 3 minutes (the duration should be just long enough to stop the action of the enzymes and kill the bacteria).

Drain and immediately plunge beans into ice-water bath

Blot beans dry with paper towels and place on a lightly sprayed baking sheet.  Put them on the top shelf of your freezer, or the coldest most point, and let freeze for at least one hour, checking from time to time to break apart and keep them separate.

Once frozen, pack into freezer storage bags and lay flat in the freezer.

There's no need to French-cut the beans if you don't want to. Simply cut them into the desired size and proceed as above. $2 for 2 lbs. of fresh green beans from the Farmer's Market, one hour of time = one-gallon bag of French-cut green beans! Priceless!

Enjoy,
Mary