How to Store Green Beans? Several ways
The French bean is originally from the American continent where it has been cultivated for thousands of years. Green beans fall under this large group of legumes. It is an easy vegetable that is used in many dishes, but how to store green beans?
Green beans don’t like the cold! You can store fresh green beans in the fruit bowl for 5 days. Can be stored in the refrigerator for 2 days, in the freezer, can be kept for 9 months after blanching Boiled green beans can be stored in the refrigerator for 2 days.
Green beans are available fresh, but also in pots, tins, and from the freezer. Green beans are also a well-known vegetable in many vegetable gardens. This blog is about how you can save them.
Buy green beans
The green beans in a jar or the frozen green beans, we are not going to talk about that in this article. We are going to talk about fresh green beans that you buy in the supermarket.
The green beans you buy should look fresh. Beautiful green and fresh in color. The end of the green beans should also be green and not brown or discolored.
You can also recognize the fresh green beans by the sound. Take one from the shelf and break the green bean. You should hear a real crack now. The green bean should not bend to a large extent and then break. It should feel sturdy and crack when breaking. Then you have a fresh bean that you can keep longer.
Store green beans
Green beans are a vegetable that does not like extreme cold. It follows that the green beans can be stored well outside the refrigerator. A cool dark place is preferred. However, it is difficult to find a cool dark place in today’s houses. Most houses do not have a basement closet. To find the best place in the house, otherwise, the fruit bowl is also a good place.
You can store green beans in the fruit bowl and they will stay good and fresh for 3-5 days. They stay crispy, you can check this by breaking a green bean.
Green Beans Store In The Refrigerator
If you don’t have a good place outside the fridge, you can also store the green beans in the fridge. Keep them as high as possible in the refrigerator, because there is relatively the highest temperature there. Green beans are not happy with a temperature lower than 5 degrees.
Open the bag and place it on the highest plate of the refrigerator.
However, the storage time decreases quickly, you can then keep them for a maximum of 2 days. The green beans quickly lose quality and can become limp and slimy. If this is the case, do not eat anymore but throw it away.
How to Freeze Green Beans
A storage method that is often used for green beans is in freezing. However, storage in the freezer is not done just like that, there are still a few steps involved.
Green beans that have not been cleaned and washed can be frozen immediately. However, when you want to use green beans, it gets a bit tricky. They must first be thawed before you can clean them and process them further. Green beans do not like this very much.
However, there is another method to properly freeze green beans. With this method, you can immediately use them in your dish when you take them out of the freezer. This method is via blanching. The first step is to clean the beans.
Green Beans Cleaning and Cutting.
Before we can blanch, the green beans are cleaned first. Cut off the bottom and top of the beans. Also, remove the bad/brown spots. If the beans are large, you can halve them.
Then grab a colander and wash the green beans under the tap. Make sure all the dirt is off the green beans. Let it drain briefly in the colander.
How to Blanch Green Beans
The next step is blanching, but what is the advantage of blanching?
Blanching has advantages over freezing green beans immediately. First, any bacteria are killed by heating. The green beans thus retain their quality.
By blanching and then freezing, the taste, color and texture are preserved. In short, they remain ‘fresh’ green beans.
Place a pan of water on a heat source and bring the water to a boil. Then prepare another pan and fill this pan with cold water and ice cubes. Don’t have ice cubes? Then put your colander ready in the sink.
When the water boils, the green beans are placed in the boiling water for about 3 minutes. Now drain the green beans in a colander and put them immediately in the pan with cold water or rinse them under the cold tap with cold water.
The heating kills the bacteria and the rapid cooling stops the cooking process.
When the green beans have cooled, they are placed on a clean tea towel and dried. This is of course also possible with kitchen paper.
They are then placed in a freezer bag and placed in the freezer. The green beans will remain good for at least another 9 months.
Cooking Frozen Green Beans
Do you want to use the frozen green beans in a dish? Do not defrost them, but put them straight from the freezer in boiling water or in the stir-fry dish you are making. Heat the water again. so that it starts boiling again.
In this way they retain their structure and taste. They don’t go limp.
For the processing of frozen green beans from the freezer, there is always some advice that can be followed. This is: looking, smelling, feeling and tasting.
See if the green beans and still look good. Smell if there are no strange odors coming off. Feel if they are still firm and finally, if it is really necessary, taste a piece.
Preserve Cooked Green Beans
Cooked green beans can be stored. Both in the freezer and in the refrigerator.
Store the cooked green beans in a sealed container or bag in the refrigerator. They can then be kept for 2-3 days.
They can also be kept in the freezer in a sealed container or bag. The structure, taste, and color deteriorate quickly. This method of storing cooked green beans is not preferred.
If the green beans are part of, for example, a stir-fry dish, you can probably also keep it for 2 days in the refrigerator in a closed container.
If you are going to use it again or warm it up, take this advice to heart; Look, Smell and Taste.
Check if it still looks edible, smells if there are no unpleasant smells and finally you can taste if it still tastes good. Not sure about the freshness? Then throw it away and don’t take any chances.
