Whether you’ve spent countless weeks painstakingly cultivating your own green beans in the garden or you just brought home a bounty from the farmer’s market, you don’t want them to go to waste. If you want to enjoy fresh, delicious green beans all winter, you’ve got to preserve them.
I’m here to help with a list of 12 reliable, unique ways to preserve your green beans for the wintertime so you can enjoy them on their own or in recipes for months to come.
No matter how you like to enjoy green beans, there is bound to be a method in here that will work for you. We will get right into it below.
Canning
Canning is a mainstay method of preservation for generations of home cooks, gardeners, and homesteaders, and with good reason…
It is one of the most reliable and longest-lasting methods we have and will generally give you a shelf life of around a year as long as you pay attention to proper processing.
And contrary to the assertion I still see pop up around the web, you don’t have to pickle green beans in order to can them safely at home.
Pressure canning works just fine, although you shouldn’t use water bath canning methods because green beans are a low-acid food.
To be clear, there is no safe methodology for doing so according to the National Center for Home Food Preservation.
But even here you have options, and you can go for a hot or raw pack at your preference. Once you’re finished, the shelf life of your canned green beans will be about a year.
Air-Drying
One of the oldest methods for preserving green beans, and all kinds of beans, is simply air-drying them.
Air-drying your beans can give you a shelf life of around 3 to 4 months, maybe a bit longer in ideal conditions.
Beans should be washed first and have the ends trimmed off before being sliced lengthwise. Some people blanch the beans prior to this step to help them retain their color.
Then all you have to do is spread your green bean pieces out on a mesh screen in a dry, warm area that is out of direct sunlight.
You’ll have to painstakingly rotate the pieces every day until they are fully dried out and brittle, snapping cleanly. You’ll also have to protect them from pests and moisture in the meantime. But if you can do it right, they will keep if stored in an airtight container and kept totally dry.
Dehydrating
If you want the convenience of dried green beans without all the fuss and hassle of traditional air-drying, you can just pop them in your home food dehydrator.
Green beans do best in a food dehydrator if they are blanched prior to being trimmed and cut into uniform pieces. Again, this improves color and texture post-drying.
Follow the instructions for your specific model, but the rule of thumb is that a batch of green beans will take anywhere from 8 to 12 hours with the dehydrator set at 125° F.
Once the beans are completely dried out, brittle, and snap cleanly with no bending, they are ready to store in an airtight container. Expect them to last anywhere from 3 to 6 months, depending on conditions.
Frozen
For so many of us, the simplest way to store fresh produce for the long haul is to freeze it. Freezing reliably provides up to one year of shelf life before their quality degrades from condensation and freezer burn.
Once again, your beans should be washed with the ends trimmed off, and you can optionally blanch the beans once you’ve dried them.
To be clear, blanching is not strictly necessary, though as ever it will improve taste, texture, and color.
Also, don’t just pile your green beans up in a freezer bag and then toss them in there; working in batches if you have to, spread out a layer of the beans on a baking sheet in a single layer and freeze them until they are totally solid, then transfer them to your container.
I prefer using freezer bags because it’s easy to get the excess air out.
Frozen, in Soup
Another clever way to store your green beans is in soup or broth if you have a recipe you really like. Naturally, I lean towards a packed veggie soup or a veggie and beef.
Wash, trim, and portion the green beans, blanch, and then prepare your soup. Add all the ingredients, but undercook the veggies just slightly.
Once the soup cools down, ladle it into freezer-safe containers and then pop them in the freezer, making sure to leave room for expansion so you don’t wind up with a terrible mess.
Your frozen soup will keep for around 6 months or a little bit longer, and once you thaw and heat it, your green beans should be perfectly tender but not mushy.
Freeze-Drying
The most sophisticated method of food preservation by a long shot also produces the very best shelf life you can get.
Freeze-drying works by first freezing food and then subjecting it to a vacuum, allowing the frozen moisture to sublimate directly into a gas, leaving behind totally dry, hard food. One happy side effect is that its nutritional value is barely affected, as is the color.
Sadly, the technology is very expensive for at-home use and reconstituted food will often have a very different texture.
Nonetheless, freeze-drying is tops if you want to keep your green beans fresh, safe, and edible until Kingdom Come, and if properly packaged they will have a shelf life in excess of 20 years. Amazing!
Powdered
Powdered green beans? What are those? Exactly what it says they are, and they’re surprisingly great for adding nutrients, flavor, and thickness to sauces, soups, and more.
You get powdered green beans by first drying fresh ones, either by air-drying or dehydrating, and then grinding them in a food processor with a fine blade or other attachment until you have a fine powder that looks like anything else you have on your spice rack.
Stored in an airtight container and kept absolutely safe from moisture, you’ll get at least 6 months out of them.
Salt-Packing
For ages, salt packing was one of the only reliable and reasonably portable methods of room-temperature preservation for vegetables, meat, and more. You can still make it work today if you want to, and it can be one of the best options for off-grid storage.
But you’ll need a completely sterilized jar, crock, or other food-safe container. Your beans must be washed and the ends trimmed off, and they should be absolutely dry before you move on.
Start by layering salt in the container until it completely covers the bottom, then add a layer of green beans. Add another layer of salt until they are covered, then add more green beans, repeating until the container is completely full.
The contents should then be pressed down, packing everything together, until you cover the container.
Place the container in a cool, dark place and rinse your green beans prior to use. They will look a little different and won’t taste the same, obviously, but they should be safe and edible.
Oil-Packing
Oil packing is another ancient method of food preservation and one that still has cultural significance around the world today.
Oil-packed green beans are, obviously, very oily and pick up a lot of extra calories, but they can also be quite delicious. That’s because, along with oil, herbs, spices, garlic, and more are usually added to the mixture, and olive oil is itself quite tasty.
This method is also pretty easy to do, and you need nothing more than glass food storage jars with tightly sealing lids.
Wash, trim, and blanch your green beans, pack them into the jars tightly with any other seasonings you want in there according to the recipe, then pour olive oil over the beans until they’re totally submerged. Leave as little room in the jar for air as possible.
Shelf life will be anywhere from a month to 3 months in the refrigerator.
Pickling
You can pickle nearly any vegetable, and green beans are no exception. They’re also terrifically tasty and a wonderful garnish or component in a nice bean salad.
There are lots of good seasoning recipes out there for pickled beans, but generally you’ll want to go with a dill-based variety.
Unlike traditional canning methods, if you’re pickling your beans you can process them in a water bath, meaning this is a somewhat easier and more accessible method for getting started with canning generally.
After they are done, you want to leave them to season for at least 2 weeks prior to consuming for the best flavor, and they will last at least 6 months.
Root Cellar
Last and certainly not least, you can store green beans in a root cellar to extend their life at temps lower than room temperature, but above those used for refrigeration or freezing.
The traditional way to store green beans, and all other beans, is to let them dry out on the plant before placing the dry vines and stalks in the driest spot of your root cellar for storage.
Colder, as always, is best, but if your root cellar is at or below 50° F / 10° C, they’ll keep for a few months at least.
A root cellar is also a great place to keep salted green beans, dehydrated beans, or powdered beans as detailed above if you don’t have access to a nice cool pantry or refrigeration.
Fermenting
Fermenting is similar to pickling in terms of results, but your green beans will be even tangier.
The process can also be done at room temperature and doesn’t require actual canning procedures aside from placing the green beans in the fermentation vessel.
They are an acquired taste, but my family has grown to like them, and as with pickling, you can experiment with different kinds of brine for different results.
Tim is a farm boy with vast experience on homesteads, and with survival and prepping. He lives a self-reliant lifestyle along with his aging mother in a quiet and very conservative little town in Ohio. He teaches folks about security, prepping and self-sufficiency not just through his witty writing, but also in person.
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