Freeze Fresh Green Beans (with 6 Time Saving Tips)
Learn how to freeze homegrown green beans, and use these time saving tips to speed the process at home!
Green beans are one of those vegetables that I often use in the kitchen. They're easy to serve as a side dish, and I enjoy adding them to soups, stews, chicken pot pie and stir fry.
I also like beans because they're easy to grow in the garden, and they're even easier to freeze for later!
When I first decided to preserve my homegrown green beans, I used the pressure canner. My canner is large, and I can fit 21 pint jars in it. I remember thinking...I've got this! Home food preservation made easy!
So it went...until one particular year. Harvest season fell on the gardens, and I found myself with a lot of green beans on hand! I remember being especially worn out that day, and was too tired to pressure can the beans I had picked.
We couldn't possibly eat them all before they spoiled, so I threw the green pods into freezer bags and tossed the bags into our chest freezer.
It turned out to be a great move, because I learned 4 amazing things about preserving green beans!
- Freezing green beans is 10x faster than pressure canning them.
- You don't have to blanch green beans before freezing.
- The texture and flavor of frozen green beans is waaaaaay better (so much fresher!) than anything you get with canned beans!
- Freezing is more far energy efficient than canning (both for you and your home!).
Is it necessary to mention that I don't really can green beans anymore?
Because green beans are a staple in my cooking, I grow a lot. We eat some fresh, yes. But they also go directly from the garden to the kitchen, and from the kitchen to the freezer.
Here are some of my best tips for saving time when freezing fresh beans.
How to Freeze Fresh Green Beans
If you understand how to prepare and freeze green beans, skip to the time saving tips below.
Never preserved green beans in the freezer? Here are some simple steps you can follow!
- Harvest green beans and bring them indoors.
- Trim off the stem and the tail end with a sharp knife (those ends can be tough!).
- If the green beans are older, you'll want to string them, or at least check and see if it's needed.
- Toss your whole green beans into a heavy duty, freezer plastic bag.
- Fill the bag, press the air out and seal.
- Lay the bag flat on its side in the freezer and let it sit until beans are frozen solid.
- After this, you can remove bean by the handful, whenever you need them.
- If you want shorter green beans, you can snap frozen ones to the desired length and add them directly to your recipe.
Time Saving Tips for Freezing Green Beans
Tip 1: Make sure you're prepared to do the job
Before you dive into preserving green beans, be sure of the following 3 things.
- You have enough freezer bags on hand (use the heavy freezer type).
- Be sure you have time to harvest, trim and freeze your beans!
- Make sure you have freezer space for bags of beans.
Helpful tip: I like to store green beans in freezer boxes, so I can easily find them and see what I have. Boxes keep slippery plastic bags from dropping to the bottom of the freezer, where they're hard to get at (which usually results in freezer burn around here!).
Tip 2: Harvest green beans before they develop strings
Harvest green beans while they're still young and tender, about pencil size. This will save you from stringing the beans!
Yes, over mature beans develop a tough fiber in the indent that runs the length of the bean. This fiber is unchewable, and if it develops you'll have to "string" each bean.
This is totally doable, but it takes more time on your part.
If you want to save time, stay on top of your bean patch and make sure you harvest every few days during bean season.
Tip 3: Get help from family or a friend
If you're only dealing with a small bowlful of beans, you'll whip through them in no time. But if you have lots of beans to deal with, recruit some help!
Involve the whole family in the process. Even little kids can help pick beans and fill bags. And don't ever be afraid to ask a friend to help in exchange for some delicious, homegrown green beans!
Everything goes faster when you're doing it with someone else.
Tip 4: Skip the blanching process
My little mennonite grandma always blanched her green beans before freezing them. After heating a large pot of water on the stove, she would drop beans into the boiling water.
A minute or two later, she would transfer her beans to cold water. The light cooking process disabled the action of natural enzymes, and the ice water stopped the cooking process, so she didn't end up with mushy green beans.
In those days, folks thought you had to blanch everything. But today, we know blanching actually isn't necessary if you're going to use your frozen green beans within the year.
Now...if you're aiming for long-term storage (more than a year's time), you would want to blanch your raw green beans. But around here, our beans are usually gone within 8-12 months.
If that's you, don't mess with blanched green beans.
Tip 5: Don't cut green beans into smaller pieces
When you're pressed for time, don't bother cutting green beans down to size after you trim the ends. Some folks like to cut beans into 1-inch pieces, but this just isn't necessary.
Frozen beans snap easily, and you can break them down to size later.
At least I do.
And when I'm serving green beans as a side dish, I prefer them to be full length because they hold their flavor better (or so I think!).
Tip 6: Directly bag green beans, instead of flash freezing them
If you don't blanch your green beans, there's no need to flash freeze them! Raw, whole beans won't stick together when frozen, so you can just stuff your ziplock bags, seal and freeze. You'll be able to remove frozen beans by the handful.
Questions Folks Ask
Can I freeze both bush beans and pole beans?
Yes, and yes.
If you're a gardener who just wants fresh green beans on hand (and in the freezer), it doesn't matter if you grow a pole or bush bean variety.
Look for plants that produce snap beans or stringless beans. The pods grow to be quite large before they develop tough strings, and you'll have a large harvest window.
Should I flash freeze my green beans on a baking sheet before freezing?
No. Folks only flash freeze green beans when they're dealing with wet, blanched beans. If you aren't blanching beans, they can go directly into the freezer bag after the ends are trimmed with a sharp knife.
What size of freezer bag is best for my family?
I used to freeze lots of fresh produce in quart-size freezer bags, until I realize I was wasting a lot of bags!
Because whole, unblanched beans don't stick to together when frozen, you can store several pounds of green beans in a large (or even extra large) freezer bag. All you have to do is open a bag, grab what you need and close things back up.
Easy peasy, with less waste and lower costs on freezer bags!
How long will raw green beans last in the freezer?
It depends on several things!
- The temperature of your freezer effects how long things last (you want beans to freeze solid).
- Quality of your plastic bags matter, so be sure to use heavy ziplock freezer bags.
- Oxygen exposure will break your beans down, so try and suck excess air out of each freezer bag before sealing it up.
On average, you can expect to get 8-12 months (or more) from unblanched, whole frozen green beans.
What is the best way to use frozen green beans?
There's nothing like mess of green beans, lightly cooked in a cast iron skillet with butter, garlic slices and dill!
But other ways I use green beans in the kitchen include:
- beef stew
- chicken soup
- chicken pot pie
- omelettes
- quiche
- shepherds pie
- stir fry rice
It doesn't stop here. You can find lots of green bean recipes online! Like the traditional green bean casserole, or oven roasted green beans with bacon!
Think about your family's favorite foods, and see if there's a way you can incorporate green beans into it (like we do with omelettes and quiche).
