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Blanching green beans ensures that their texture, color, and taste are not lost when prepared later. Blanching green beans before freezing ensures that once thawed, they are not a pile of mush when prepared in a dish. This is just the starting step when you are freezing green beans.
Blanching Green Beans
Blanching green beans keeps them tender and crisp when cooked and keeps their color vibrant green. You can use blanched green beans in my Roasted Green Beans or my tasty Green Beans Almondine for a tasty side dish.
Karlynn’s Cooking Tips
Adding a higher amount of salt to the water allows the green beans to tenderize rapidly and penetrates the beans’ sturdy skins to season them more fully than smaller amounts would.
If you are on a low-sodium diet, you can reduce or omit the salt.
How to Blanch Green Beans
It’s really simple to blanch green beans, and very little prep is needed.
- Add the water and salt to a large stock pot and bring to a boil.
- Wash and trim the ends of the green beans under cool, running water
- Fill a large bowl with ice water and set it beside the stove.
- Add the green beans to the boiling water and stir, and cook until crisp-tender, about 2 to 3 minutes.
- Transfer the beans immediately to the ice water and immerse them in the water.
- Remove from the ice bath and pat dry with clean towels or paper towels.
- Use in your recipe as needed.
- If freezing, transfer to the freezer bags. Freeze and use within 3 months.
Why Blanch Green Beans?
Green beans are a seasonal crop in some places and aren’t always available in the grocery store when you need them. You can freeze them when they are plentiful but blanching them before freezing is a vital step in the process for the best green beans in your cooking. If green beans are frozen without blanching, when they are thawed they can be quite soggy and turn to mush.
How to Trim Green Beans
The only prep with green beans is trimming them before you can cook them, that’s it!
The key trick is to separate your green beans into amounts that can easily fit into your hand. Once separated, line them up in a single line on your chopping board.
Holding the green beans lightly, tap the end of the beans firmly with your knife to try and get the green beans’ ends to line up. Once they are all level with each other, you can make one single cut to take off the tips easily.
Once cut, flip the green beans and do the same to the other side, and then repeat the process on the rest of your green beans.
Happy Cooking
Love,
Karlynn
More Great Grean Beans
How to Blanch Green Beans
- Prep Time
- 20 minutes
- Cook Time
- 3 minutes
- Course
- Side Dish
- Cuisine
- American
- Servings
- 1
- Calories
- 141
- Equipment
- long handled tongs
- Author
- Karlynn Johnston
Ingredients
- 1 pound green beans
- 8 cups water
- 2 tablespoons coarse salt
Instructions
- Add the water and salt to a large stock pot and bring to a boil.
- Wash the green beans under cool, running water. Trim the ends.
- Fill a large bowl with ice water and set beside the stove.
- Add the green beans to the boiling water, stir, and cook until crisp-tender, about 2 to 3 minutes.
- Using a pair of long handled tongs, remove the beans immediately to the ice water and immerse them in the water.
- Remove from the ice bath and pat dry with clean towels or paper towels.
- Use in your recipe as needed.
- If freezing, transfer to the freezer bags. Freeze and use within 3 months.
Recipe Notes
- This method is great for preparing green beans ahead of time for a dish, the ice bath stops the beans from cooking further.
Nutrition Information
All calories and info are based on a third party calculator and are only an estimate. Actual nutritional info will vary with brands used, your measuring methods, portion sizes and more.
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