How To Freeze Fresh Green Beans ( Step By Step Pictures)

There's nothing quite like fresh green beans picked at their prime when they are crisp, green, and naturally delicious.Freezing is the easiest, safest ways to preserve produce and it doesn't require any special skills or equipment.During the height of summer, green bean plants often produce more beans than one can eat fresh so if you need to keep some for later, freezing is a great way to do that so you can enjoy them in the winter

Green Beans need to be blanched before freezing. This helps maintain vitamins and reduces the actions of enzymes. It will help them stay fresh longer in the freezer. (Blanching, the scalding of vegetables in boiling water or steam, slows or stops the action of enzymes and preserves texture, color and flavor. If vegetables are not blanched, the enzymes continue to be active during frozen storage causing off-colors, off-flavors and toughening.)

How To Freeze Fresh Green Beans

Wash the beans by placing them into a sink or large vessel filled with water. Wash the beans several times or until the water runs clean

Snap/Cut the stem ends off, and cut the bean into bite-size pieces, or leave the beans whole.

Boil a large pan of water, and add the beans to the water as soon as the water boils( work in batches don't overcrowd the pan). Keep the ratio of beans to water at about one to three. You want the water to return to boiling quickly. Blanch the beans for 3 minutes.

After 3 minutes, immediately plunge the bright green beans into ice water. This will stop the cooking process.Let them sit in the ice water for 3 minutes.( Cool the beans for the same amount of time it took to blanch them)

Now spread them on a paper towel or kitchen towel for drying completely. There should not be any moisture left in the beans when packing in zip lock bags for freezing.

Fill the beans in the freezer safe zip lock bags or containers. Once you fill the bags, label them immediately. Mark all bags, and pop them into the freezer.

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Notes:-

* Fresh green beans that have been properly frozen retain their delicious flavor and vivid color, but before freezing green beans they must be blanched in order to retain their bright green color, vitamins, and their fresh-picked flavor.

* Frozen green beans that have been blanched maintain a better color and texture and can easily be stir fried, sauteed, or roasted.

* Use only fresh green beans, which are neither too young nor too old for freezing.

* If you are freezing beans in more than one bags then place packages in a single layer in your freezer until they are completely frozen. Then you can rearrange and stack things more conveniently.This allows the packages to freeze as quickly as possible. If you stack several bags on top of each other before freezing, the layers in the middle will take much longer to freeze and may spoil.

* Labeling the bags with the type of vegetable as well as the date you froze them and the date you feel they should be eaten by is also helpful.

* Frozen beans are recommended to use within 8-12 months. After that point, the food will likely still be safe to eat, but the quality will gradually decrease.

* Beans preserve more of the nutrients when you freeze them instead of canning.