Delectable dilly beans. August 11, 2008
Posted by ourfriendben in recipes.Tags: canning, green bean recipes, green beans, pickling
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Silence Dogood here. The computer’s back online after the major thunderstorm that swept through the area this morning, so I guess it’s safe to write a post about beans. Our friend Ben and I love beans—green and wax beans, the incredible speckled ‘Dragon Tongue’ beans (eaten like green beans), lima slash butter beans, pinto, black, kidney, and so on beans. Beans! And fresh bean season is exactly now.
Our friend Ben and I have been eating mass quantities of mixed green and yellow wax beans practically daily, and we can never get enough. As a reminder, I learned a fabulous technique from our friend Carolyn for preparing fresh veggies without drowning them in the butter Ben and I both love. Here’s what you do: Boil the beans, broccoli, broccoflower, asparagus, carrots, or what-have-you until it qualifies as “done” in your book, and then drain the veggies, leaving them in the pot. Add a little butter to the pot with the drained veggies and salt, pepper, or the condiment of your choice, put the top back on, and shake the pot to mix everything together. Leave it on the stove for a couple of minutes to make sure the butter has melted, then spoon the veggies onto everyone’s plates. They taste perfectly delicious, and you don’t have to worry about dumping great gobs of butter on your veggies (and waistline!). I always add a splash of lemon juice to broccoli and asparagus along with the butter and salt. Yum!
Given our fondness for fresh-cooked beans, it’s hard to set any aside for preserving. But now that bean season is really on us and we can buy phenomenal local beans from our farmers’ market and local grocery stores, and pick our own from our CSA, Quiet Creek Farm, it’s easy to get some extra beans to put up. The delightful gardening blog Compostings (http://compostings.wordpress.com/) just posted a marvelous show-and-tell post, “How to Freeze Your Green Beans,” about how easy it is to freeze green beans; check it out. But, since we haven’t yet committed to a freezer (we’re holding out for an upright, since chest freezers strike us as too much work—what on earth is in there, anyway?!), we’d rather pickle some beans if we’re going to preserve them.
I first encountered dilly beans at a gathering hosted by a friend, Lynn Long. Lynn’s interested in Chinese medicine, Reiki, reflexology, and other forms of alternative medicine, healing, and healthy living, so when she opened an obviously home-canned jar of pickled beans and offered them to us, I figured they had to be good for you. But I was surprised and delighted by their crispy crunch and full-bodied flavor. I couldn’t imagine actually liking pickled beans. But they were delicious!
Turns out, they’re incredibly easy to make, too. Here’s the recipe, courtesy of Aimee Good, one of the farmers at our CSA, Quiet Creek Farm. Try them!
Dilly Beans
2 or 4 quarts green beans (Aimee likes ‘Jade’ filet green beans, but any will do, as long as they’re picked at the peak of maturity, not when they get old and tough. Note: You want perfect, straight green beans for this recipe.)
4 or 8 pint jars
per jar:
1 clove garlic
1/2 teaspoon dill seed or 1 dill head
1/2 teaspoon yellow mustardseed
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1 hot pepper (optional)
2 1/2 to 5 cups vinegar (2 1/2 for 2 quarts beans, 5 cups for 4 quarts beans)
2 1/2 to 5 cups water (use equal amounts water and vinegar)
Wash and trim the beans to fit neatly in pint jars, packing the beans upright in sterile jars. If you’re using dill heads, add one per jar. Add one garlic clove and one hot pepper (if using) per jar. Add all other ingredients (dill seed, if using, celery seed, mustardseed, and salt) to the pan with the water-vinegar solution and bring to a boil. Pour the hot solution over the beans in your jars and process the jars in a hot-water bath for 5 minutes. When the jars have cooled and sealed, let them age for at least 2 weeks before eating to develop the flavor. The dilly beans will stay crisp indefinitely.
That’s it, folks! I can’t say I’d rather eat dilly beans than a hot passel of green and yellow beans with butter and salt, but I will say these dilly beans are delicious! Try them; I think you’ll agree!
‘Til next time,
Silence
Oh, sounds good. I am looking for recipes to try when I get my garden going next year, hoping for loads of frest produce. I’m going to have to start a file for preserved foods.
I must say I like my upright freezer very much, but I store large quantities of day old breads and meats bought on sale, so I rarely have much room for frozen vegetables. I suppose we really should have a bigger freezer than the one we have, but I can’t afford a bigger one right now. I hear the chest freezers are much more energy efficient, if they had had some of those ones with a bazillion pull out baskets in them when we bought ours I must admit I probably would have bought one of those instead. They also keep things colder longer if the power goes out and you’re forced to open the freezer for whatever reason.
Hmmm, interesting arguments in favor of chest freezers, Cinj! But even with bazillion baskets, I’d think you’d still have to lift them all out to find anything. I’m still holding out for an upright!
This is the year! I vow to make the guy who actually does all the canning of my veggies to do some dilly beans. I love beans. I love dilly anything (dilly ice cream would be delicous, dilly breakfast cereal too) and beans should be no exception.
Go for it!!! I was just out at Jim Weaver’s Meadow View Farm, and noticed that they had jars of yellow wax beans called “mustard beans.” Hmmm, I thought, that sounds intriguing, too. I’ll have to go back and check ‘em out!!!