Green Beans / String Beans

Do you ever use them in salads?

Are you supposed to cook 'em first?

Yes and yes - in Salad Nicoise recipe

Quick/brief cooking, chill in freezer or fridge while preparing other ingredients.

How do you cook 'em? Zap 'em?

The recipe you linked doesn't call for cooking.

Sent you a PM with a more detailed recipe. Recipe says blanched which is cooked briefly - I zap frozen for 4 - 5 minutes in microwave.

Thanks MW, I just read the updated recipe, That would be a good "Rob & Randy" lunch because they could help me with the prep work.....and it's low carb.

Scrubb, throw 'em out, After a year beans go stale and have a mealy constistency.

Seriously, whadya pay? A buck a bag, maybe?

Canned goods will last a long time but I wouldn't go beyond 2 or 3 years past the expiration date.

There's a website devoted to this. www.stilltasty.com I think is the name of it.

That sounds really good.

Green beans,string beans and long beans blanched in boiling water for a minute or two stores quite well in the freezer for later use in salads.
Quite often used in Indonesian "gado gado" salad/ulam dish with spicy hot chunky peanut butter satay sauce.

I make a salad with green beans (flat ones if possible like these cooked a short while so they are still crisp, with tomatoes and a bit of basil. Vinaigrette dressing. I got the recipe from an Italian friend.

Manch, surely you've had good old three-bean salad?

This time of year, don't even think of frozen beans. Trim the ends off fresh beans, boil a large pot of water, throw the beans in & cook for about 5 minutes at a boil. After 3 minutes, start tasting. Once you've done that a couple of times, you'll know how long it takes beans to cook to the degree you like them.

While the beans are cooking, fill a bowl with water & ice cubes (not water alone, not ice alone). When the beans are done drain them, and immediately put into the ice water for a few minutes. Don't leave them int he water forever. Refrigerate in a baggie for no more than a day or two.

This is a favorite of mine. You could use all green beans if you want, but the yellow beans make it more attractive. Green Bean, Yellow Bean and Cherry Tomato Salad

String beans are eaten raw on a daily basis all over Indochina and Thailand.

Occasionally they are eaten in curries, then they're cooked of course.

There are a lot of recipes of salads with green beens in Spain. You'll find some of them on this page (Spanish only; use an online translator; look for recipes that start by ensalada de judías verdes). You'll find another recipe here and another one (Spanish only) here (Spanish only)... There are a lot of them.

Gado gado, salade niçoise, and three (or four) bean salad are all good.

You can add chickpeas to that salade niçoise recipe, manch. And also a three-bean salad.

Yes; raw, chopped into wee drums.

Nutrax - I had to laugh reading the comments on the recipe. Many were quite helpful, but one person omitted 2 key ingredients, substituted a different vinegar, then said "not very flavorful, something was missing".

That was an interesting link, bjd. Thanks for posting it. I didn't know that green beans came from South America, or that their dried seeds were eaten (if I read that correctly). And how appropriate that you got a recipe from an Italian, since they were the first to eat them whole, as beans.

Mmm...mmm...good! My mouth is watering, now that I have looked at some of the recipes at #10. There's a salad of green beans and anchovies at the second link that sounds wonderful. I used the Google "language tools" translator on a couple of the menus, and although there were some errors in the translations I don't think they would cause you to go wrong if you knew no Spanish.

Edited by NorthAmerican.

NA, green beans/string beans are the same New World species, Phaseolus vulgaris, as kidney beans, Great Northern Beans, black beans, navy beans, cranberry beans, and a number of other beans typically eaten after having been dried and reconstituted. Those are the seeds that that site is talking about.

I had not known myself that it was 18th century Italy that we first started eating the immature pods of P. vulgaris. Thanks, bjd.

Old World Beans include broad beans (favas, foul, & others), lentils, cowpeas (black-eye peas & others), chickpeas/garbanzo beans/ceci, and green peas(including edible pod peas.)

typo:

I had not known myself that it was in 18th century Italy that we first started eating the immature pods of P. vulgaris.

Green Beans Gom-ae!

This is a copy of something I posted on another message board

Back in the late 1970s, I was sent from California to a rural Maryland town for a 6 months job assignment. I was used to the wide variety of very fresh vegetables grown within a couple of hours of my city. In that rural Maryland town, I rarely saw what I would consider good fresh vegetables, except for a very short season when farmers markets had local produce. I really missed my good veggies.

I rented part of a house that had been converted to apartments. The nice elderly couple next door had a huge vegetable garden, consisting primarily of green beans. I used to lust after those beans.

One day, Mrs. Neighbor saw me outside and invited me to join them later in the day for a barbecue. "We are going to have the first of our own green beans." I could hardly wait. I was so-o-o looking forward to those beans.

Mr. Neighbor barbecued and Mrs. Neighbor plated the food in the kitchen. With great pride, she handed me a plate containing an incinerated steak and a bunch of gray tubes. "We like our green beans best after they've been canned."

Yep. She had home-canned the green beans, then cooked them, Southern style, for a hour or so with a chunk of ham. I looked at my plate. I looked over at all those crisp, vibrant beans still on the plants. I looked back at my plate.

I never knew I possessed such good acting ability.

For a "green bean" that really grabs you by the throat and shakes you,try some "petai'(Parkia speciosa)either raw,blanched in hot boiling water,or
grilled/toasted over hot charcoal with or without the skin.

I've had them and didn't understand what the fuss was about.

What's petai called in English? I like 'em but, incredibly, can't get them here.

Wikipedia says they can be called bitter beans or stink beans but I've only seen them called petai in English.

Thanks, Vin.

"Petai" has a stong pungent,slightly bitter and even hot spicy aftertaste even without flavoring and sauces/dips.
It's an acquired taste and some people,myself included, are addicted to them.
They are considered to be effective anti oxidants,antiseptic and also used to lower blood sugar and hypertension in local traditional herbal medicine.Often consumed in local salads/"ulams".
"Petai" is the Malay/Bahasa Indonesian name for the bean.
The wild petai tree growing in the forest are large, very tall trees with spreading branches and tiny leaflets and are usually gathered by the "orang asli" tribal people for their own consumption and sale in the markets.
They have also been cultivated commercially in small farms and plantations as shade trees for cocoa bean bushes.

We've discussed petai before.

Pix of petai/sataw

Interesting dish

Stink beans.(Pakia)

I must have had a particularly mild bunch. There were four of us eating them, so it wasn't that I'm insensitive to them. None of us noticed anything strong in the taste or smell.