5 Tips for Using and Storing Green Beans

June 24, 2017 Author: Ann Clary Organic Gardening: Vegetables / The Mighty Garden Archive

Storing. As with most vegetables, snap or green beans are at their best just after picking; if not cooked or eaten after harvest, cool snap or green beans immediately for optimum storage life. Under ideal storage conditions of 32° F and 95% relative humidity, green beans will store well for 7 to 10 days. If stored at normal refrigerator temperatures, they are best eaten within a few days. Snap or green beans can also be lightly blanched and frozen for future use.

Ethylene Gas Sensitivity. Green beans are moderately sensitive to ethylene gas, so when placing your green beans in your refrigerator, take care to place them far away from your ethylene-producing fruit.

Using Bean Leaves. Bean leaves are edible and can be surprisingly palatable, especially when young and tender, for eating fresh, in salads, steaming, sautéing, or stir-frying.

Using Shell Beans. Shell beans can be a wonderful culinary companion because they are close to “al dente” out of the shell and also often have a delicate sweetness missing from stored dry beans. For fine or gourmet cooking, fresh shell beans easily trump dry beans. Shell beans also cook easily, without soaking and without long periods for prep or cooking as is often needed for dry beans, and can be used for baked beans, chili, in any dish for dry or canned beans, or as a green vegetable sautéed or braised. GardenZeus recommends blanching and freezing for storage of shell beans.

Preventing Bean Weevil Damage. Stored dry beans may be prone to damage by bean weevils. After harvesting and cleaning dry beans, GardenZeus recommends freezing the beans for 1 week in air-tight plastic bags to kill any bean-weevil larvae or eggs, after which beans can be confidently stored for later eating or replanting.

To view customized information for growing pole beans in your area, go to GardenZeus and enter your zip code, then go to pole bean.