[PipKelpy]

Whether I blanch, dry, freeze, cook from frozen/defrosted or skip the blanch and go straight to freezing, runner beans here are RUBBER beans when using in winter.

A plate of runners/French straight out the garden, prepped, cooked, buttered is fab BUT we ALWAYS have a glut.

Has anyone ever dried the whole bean (green including the bean?)

[Fleecewife]

My mother used to salt the bean glut in Kilner jars, but quite honestly they weren't too good either.  I find French beans (not the flat ones) snapped into about 3cm lengths, freeze better than runners but definitely after a year in the freezer they are all past their best.  I freeze a lot of beans and apart from winter brassicas, leeks etc, they are our main veg in winter.
No, I've never dried green beans.  Why don't you try it?  Use them soon after they are dried just to see if it's worth doing more.

[chrismahon]

We pick our French beans, blanch them on the same day and then freeze on a tray before bagging them up. They taste nearly as good as fresh. We don't grow runner beans as we have never liked them. My mother used to slice them diagonally and put them in big sweet jars with layer of salt. Then soak in water to get most of the salt out before cooking. As a child they tasted OK, but I'm sure I wouldn't like them now.

[Anke]

I leave my runner beans to grow all summer and then take the beans out of the dried pod sometime in early October (they grow in my polytunnel). For fresh french/green/yellow beans I grow dwarf varieties.


I have stopped freezing them, as I also always found they turned rubbery - and everything else near them in the freezer tasted of beans...


I freeze peas and broad beans for winter use.

[Backinwellies]

runner bean chutney 

[Ghdp]

Runner bean curry is our plan this year. Like everyone else frozen runners were rubbery.