how to make canned green beans taste good?

This year I tried canning green beans for the first time. A friend assured me they were delicious and her entire family loved them; then she loaned me her pressure canner, because my giant patch of green beans had been planted later than hers. After a great deal of work, I now have shelves and shelves of canned green beans - and only one person in the family likes them. I used my friend's recipe - just add salt, I think 1/2tsp per quart jar. They're mushy and tasteless. I've made mushroom and green bean casserole, which was somewhat well received, but a lot of work, and made leftovers that only I would eat. Now I'm hiding them in split pea soup, which works but seems rather a waste.

I did also make dilly beans, and those have been a huge success; the children snack on a jar and finish it off in a day. I added calcium citrate to those jars, and the texture is much better. But, since they're acidic, they were only water bath canned for 10 minutes. Will calcium citrate save pressure canned beans from turning to mush? What can I do to turn a prolific harvest of green beans into nutritious food that won't need a lot of prep in the winter? (The previous year I froze green beans, and the texture of those was pretty bad too.)

And secondarily, is there an easy formula for converting from ten minutes of water bath canning to something in a pressure canner? eg, if I want to make quart jars of dilly beans instead of pint jars, and the pan isn't large enough to have water cover the tops of the quart jars adequately for water bath canning. (Well, it does, and then boils over all over the stove and nearly puts out the flame on the gas stove if I'm not watching closely.)

We have come to the conclusion that green beans are difficult to preserve. Years ago, our method was to blanch and freeze. They were welcome in our long winters, but never quite as lovely as we had hoped, though they were good quality food regardless.

Now, at our house, green beans are for fresh eating -- and trading with neighbours when we have a surplus. It helps to have a range of beans that produce in sequence: bush beans, scarlet runner beans, and blue lake pole beans which produce late and right up to the frost. Hummingbirds and bumblebees also approve of these arrangements.

Dilly beans and hot-pepper-dilly -beans are a big deal here too. Mmm, on my plate and in other folks' xmas stockings. A few cherry leaves add the tannins that keep them crispy.

We have a line that started with blue lakes.  They stay nice.  We cook them straight in a pan with a little butter and water.  They  stay firm and taste great.  

My wife makes great chili with them.  She also will put a ring of sausage in a pan and cook them with the beans.  We pick them younger so the beans are only about half grown in the shell.  We have grown and canned them for 24 years and never had that problem.  Hopefully some one will know why here.

Actually we have never tried preserving blue lakes. They come so late here, in our short season. But they are our favourites in every way. Thanks for the tip!

This is not really an answer to the question, because the answer is "I don't know". Canning green beans makes them last much longer, but they always came out mushy and tasteless when I was a kid. As an adult, it is just one of the things we freeze instead of can, because it comes out better for us. It might be that some varieties do better than otherwise, but that would probably be trial and error.

If  you're growing more green beans than you can eat,  maybe leave some on the vine and see if you like them as shell beans or dry beans?  You could also try the old method of "leather britches" drying the green beans for storage and stewing then long to soften them up.  I have not actually t tried that,  just seen various recipes.

It's the cooking time nothing cooked for that long is going to have any texture left. Other than freezing one can salt greenbeans, yes it sounds weird and I was certain it wouldn't work but it does! It is more work to start with as the beans must be cut lengthways or you just cannot get the salt back out before cooking. But so long as you cut them once or twice lengthways (depending on type) after a couple of hours soaking in fresh water you can boil them and they are the closest thing to fresh I have tried, they are not mushy at all, infact they take a bit longer to cook than fresh ones would.

Skandi Rogers wrote:It's the cooking time nothing cooked for that long is going to have any texture left. Other than freezing one can salt greenbeans, yes it sounds weird and I was certain it wouldn't work but it does! It is more work to start with as the beans must be cut lengthways or you just cannot get the salt back out before cooking. But so long as you cut them once or twice lengthways (depending on type) after a couple of hours soaking in fresh water you can boil them and they are the closest thing to fresh I have tried, they are not mushy at all, infact they take a bit longer to cook than fresh ones would.

That's really interesting. What proportion of salt to beans do you use? What type of container do you use?

Mk Neal wrote:If  you're growing more green beans than you can eat,  maybe leave some on the vine and see if you like them as shell beans or dry beans?  You could also try the old method of "leather britches" drying the green beans for storage and stewing then long to soften them up.  I have not actually t tried that,  just seen various recipes.

I did actually, when I was still picking beans in the middle of October I gave up and announced that the rest would be seeds for next year. But they never seemed to dry on the vine properly. I didn't get back to them till mid December, to be fair, but at that point most had been eaten by animals, and what was left still seemed damp. What did I do wrong?

You've gotten some really great responses here. I do think that different variety of beans hold up differently under pressure. So if canning green beans is important to you, then spend a little time this summer testing the different varieties. You don't have to do a whole batch of one variety - you can label the lid of the jar with the variety in it.

There are two ways to pressure can green beans - raw pack and hot pack. With raw pack you put raw beans into the prepared jars and pour boiling water over them. With hot pack you blanch the beans for 5 minutes and then put the in the prepared jars and pour hot water over them. While at first the texture and color is the same, over time hot packed green beans tend to hold their color and texture better than raw packed. So, if you raw packed the green beans last year, maybe try hot packing them this year, just be sure to label so you can compare them with the raw packed ones.

As far as flavor goes, for use use the salt as it will help the green beans retain their color and texture better. I also like to can my green beans in broth instead of just water - pork broth is my favorite as it tastes like bacon...lol. You can also add any dry spices such as garlic or onion powder to the jars.

As for adjusting water bath recipes for the pressure canner, it's not possible. The USDA develops the times and they don't have any for dilly beans. However, you can use your pressure canner as a water bath canner. Fill it with water like you do the water bath canner and don't lock the lid on - just set it on top of the canner.

My mother and grandmother would blanch then pressure can green beans, of course, they were never as good as fresh, but they were alright. I suspect the secret was the bacon they added upon cooking the canned beans.

Phoebe Rehoboth wrote:
I did actually, when I was still picking beans in the middle of October I gave up and announced that the rest would be seeds for next year. But they never seemed to dry on the vine properly. I didn't get back to them till mid December, to be fair, but at that point most had been eaten by animals, and what was left still seemed damp. What did I do wrong?

Without knowing your location and climate it's just a guess, but I suspect it was just too late for a bean to dry down correctly. I grow mostly pole beans in my gardens in SE Indiana and most all pole beans are indeterminate, they keep setting new beans as long as you keep picking the older ones. For seed though, I want the first and best, so I leave some pods that formed in June to dry down in July or August. A pod left to dry in October in my climate would probably be as you described and maybe even mold.

Phoebe Rehoboth wrote:

Skandi Rogers wrote:It's the cooking time nothing cooked for that long is going to have any texture left. Other than freezing one can salt greenbeans, yes it sounds weird and I was certain it wouldn't work but it does! It is more work to start with as the beans must be cut lengthways or you just cannot get the salt back out before cooking. But so long as you cut them once or twice lengthways (depending on type) after a couple of hours soaking in fresh water you can boil them and they are the closest thing to fresh I have tried, they are not mushy at all, infact they take a bit longer to cook than fresh ones would.

That's really interesting. What proportion of salt to beans do you use? What type of container do you use?

I use large glass jars with rubber seals and glass lids, I'm sure they have a name but I don't know it. You don't want any metal in contact with the salt. % wise it's at least 50/50 I'm always aiming to have some salt still as salt if it all goes liquid I havn't added enough salt.

Angi - Thanks for the tip about types of beans and hot packing. I had assumed that cooking the beans even more before putting them in the canner would hurt the texture. I will have to experiment with that. The previous summer we tried different varieties of bush and pole beans, and settled on one bush bean that produced prolifically. But I wasn't canning that year.

Mark - We're in western PA. It was certainly a very wet fall. The previous year my husband had wanted to save seed, so he was keeping beans from earlier. I was being haphazard this year. Next year we'll try to plan as you suggest - if the children can be persuaded to leave edible beans behind!

Skandi - Thanks. I guess that means standard mason jars and two piece lids should be avoided?

I'm curious to hear more answers as well.  I love canned green beans from the store, so I know there is a way to do it and have them turn out well.  I've never tried, but I really want to.  I like canned green beans better than frozen.

You might try the variety Black Valentine. It is a bush bean. I like my green beans to be crisp tender when cooked fresh. Black Valentine took a lot more time to cook then the Bue Lake. I did not have enough harvest to try canning them though. I stopped growing them.

Trace Oswald wrote:I'm curious to hear more answers as well.  I love canned green beans from the store, so I know there is a way to do it and have them turn out well.  I've never tried, but I really want to.  I like canned green beans better than frozen.

Phew, was worried I was the only one that likes that green mush.


I'll eat canned green beans straight from the can, so I'm not a good resource for how to make the best canned food taste better, but my mom used to make pickled green beans that kept their texture in the jar quite well, so you might try that next time you can. You can water bath can pickled foods in the like 180-185 F range, which keeps texture a lot better.

I hate canned green beans from the store. They have some kind of vaguely sulfury off-flavor that turns me off.

We blanch and freeze most of our green beans, and the result is satisfying even if they are a bit soft.

Last year we made dilly beans for the first time and they were popular. We're still eating last year's supply, so we'll make them again this year.

I love the Sichuan spicy bean recipe made with Chinese peppercorns, but it has to be refrigerated, not canned.

Now that I bought a pressure canner, I may try to pressure can a small batch of plain green beans. But if they have that off-flavor again, they're outta here!

Another interesting idea would be making the spicy Sichuan beans in midwinter using pressure canned or frozen beans as the main ingredient.

I've grown up eating home canned green beans and actually prefer the taste to fresh.  Never had them to turn out mushy though and have canned a few different varieties.  

I can green beans, never had them turn to mush. They are not crisp but they are intact. My favorite way to serve them is with boursin cheese but any soft cheese would work like goat cheese or cream cheese. I just mix them together and microwave, easy peasy.

I freeze a lot of green beans as well, we like these a lot.

I tried the leather britches thing, didn't like those. It takes forever to get them rehydrated, not worth it for me.

Skandy Rodgers;
Salting the beans sounds great. I hope we can learn the amount of salt and the method.
I've planted way more than have freezer space.

It's a mind game. I grew up eating only mushy bottled green beans. Therefore, I think of crisp green beans (frozen)  as ghastly.

^ LOL

We have pressure canned green beans all our lives, and I have no problems with their taste or texture.  Then  again, they are what I grew up with.  On the flip side, we have no problem with fresh green beans over the summer.

Fresh or  canned only please!
If they are frozen , cook them till soft, add lots of salt and they will approximate canned beans.
Fresh, saute briefly with garlic.
Or eat raw m mmm.
Canned, heat then eat, though bacon and potatoes are welcome additions.