FREEZING STRING BEANS FOR THE WINTER

I love eating my own home grown string beans over the winter.  The fact that they will taste good months from now is because of how they are prepared and stored. Today I am going to share with you how I prepared and saved 7.73 pounds of string beans in under 2 hours by myself!

In my earlier post  "It's Not Too Late To Grow Beans" I shared with you how easy string beans are to grow. Those easy string beans are readily producing now and over the last three days I have filled the three gallon bags you see in the photo above (And yes, they really did total 7.73 lbs!).

My method of freezing them for the winter is very simple, but believe it or not it took me a few years to get it right! 

FIRST THINGS FIRST - PREPPING THE BEANS
Last night while watching TV with my husband I sat at the table and I prepared all the beans by simply cutting the ends off and putting them back in the bag.  At the same time I also pulled out any unwanted leaves and flowers and cut the larger beans in half.    When all was said and done the beans weighed 6.94 pounds.

This morning it took me about an hour from beginning to end (including clean-up) to finish the beans for freezing.  In the end I had 9 sandwich baggies each weighing about .77 lbs (three quarters of a pound).

BLANCHING AND FREEZING THE BEANS
Supplies:

• String Beans (cut and cleaned)
  
• Water
• Blanching Pot with Strainer and Lid
• Slotted Spoon
  
• Colander
  
• Large Bowl
  
• Ice
• Tray or Cookie Sheet
• Paper Towels
  
• Sandwich Bags
  
• Gallon Zip-lock Freezer Bags

Procedure:

• Add enough water to the pot to cover all the string beans you are putting in.  I actually used a lot of water because I did one entire gallon bag at a time. 
  
• Bring the water to a boil.
• Add the string beans and use the spoon to make sure they are all submerged.
• Cover the pot and set the timer for 3.5 minutes.
• When time is up, very slowly remove the basket strainer from the pot and pour the string beans into the colander in the cold water bath, again, using the spoon to make sure they are all submerged.
• Transfer the cooled beans to the paper towels on the tray and pat dry with additional paper towels.
• Fill sandwich bags with string beans and set aside (leave open until you are completely done)
• Continue to blanch additional bags of beans if you have them.

Boil Water

Blanch Beans 3.5 Minutes

Cold Water Bath

Pat Dry

• When all beans have been blanched and put into sandwich bags, then get as much air out of the bags as possible and close them securely.
  
• Put a maximum of 4-5 of the full sandwich bags into a one gallon zip-lock freezer bag and seal.
• Label it with the year and store it in your freezer until you are ready to use it!  Remove sandwich bags as needed and re-seal the zip-lock bag.

Put in Sandwich Bags

Put 4-5 Sandwich Bags in Gallon Freezer Bag

Some questions you may have:

• I started using the sandwich bags last year because each bag holds just enough for two to three people for dinner.  If I need more than that I just use a second one.  For us this prevents waste and makes it easier to just grab a bag as needed.  
  
• I use non-freezer sandwich bags because the beans are actually double bagged.  The sandwich bags are stored in a freezer bag so there was no reason to waste money by using two freezer bags.
  
• You can use any large pot, and having a strainer basket in the pot is not really necessary.  I used to just put the beans directly in the pot and take them out with a strainer.  It just takes a little longer to do it that way.  The set I have is actually made for blanching, relatively inexpensive,  and works extremely well.  As much as it makes the process so much easier, it is absolutely not necessary to have in order to blanch.
• I know some people claim that blanching is a waste of time and simply just freeze the beans.  That is fine if that's what you want to do.  I personally have tried it both ways and I can honestly say that in my opinion the blanched beans taste fresh even after being in the freezer for several months.  I cannot however say the same for the beans that were simply frozen as is.  

Please let me know if you have any additional questions about freezing string beans! 

Click on the picture below or the link to check out the Graniteware Blanching Pot I used! (affiliate link)