Canned green beans are NOTHING like fresh beans. They're soft and mushy and salty. Very much like canned peas. Which is to say - they're delicious. You just can't admit to thinking they're delicious.
I totally get it. Any food lover or vegetable grower is not supposed to like canned beans or peas. But I do. I grew up on them. I also like fish sticks dipped in ketchup.
That's right. Fish sticks. And ketchup. The most condemned of all the condiments. Voted most likely to be associated with Nascar. Ketchup. I like it on fish sticks and you can just deal with it.
Go figure. I'm a complex woman.
Because I grow most of the vegetables I eat all year that means I also have to preserve them.
With green beans your preserving options are canning or freezing. Either way they're going to be mushy. So I prefer to go with the option that is both mushy and salty.
Part of what makes a canned green bean good is the SALT.
The only thing salt doesn't make better is a wound.
~ KAREN BERTELSEN
If you're new to canning, green beans are definitely the easiest thing to can and they taste, you guessed it, exactly like canned green beans from the grocery store.
In other words, they taste just like mom used to open.
Table of Contents
Ingredients
- 1 lb green beans sliced, frenched or whole
- 3 tsps sea salt
Instructions
Green beans are one of the easiest things to can because you don't have to cook them at all first. You just clean them, push them into a jar with salt and add water.
- Wash and cut the tops off of your beans.
- Cut or french your beans. (frenched beans are thin ribbons you create with this tool)
- Add ½ teaspoon of salt to bottom of 250 ml jar (8 ounces )
- Fill clean canning jars with beans to 1" from top of jar. Pour boiling water over beans to 1" from top of jar.
- Add sealers and rings.
- Process in a pressure canner** for 25 minutes.
**As with any low acid food you have to process beans in a pressure canner, you cannot process them in a water bath.
Hint: Frenched green beans might stick out the top of your 250 ml jars because you leave the length of them, unlike regular sliced green beans. Just pour boiling water onto the beans and let them sit for a second. The boiling water will soften them enough that you can push the beans down into the jar.
Tips for Beginners
Use the freshest green beans you can find. This *doesn't* mean you have to use beans from your own garden. If beans are on sale at the grocery store and they look good and crisp, buy a basket of them for canning.
Press your beans down as hard as you can without bruising the beans. Pack them right in there. Bang the jar on your countertop to help them settle down.
I do my beans in small 250 ml jars because I'm cooking for one, but you can do them the exact same way with the same process time of 25 minutes in 500 ml jars. Just make sure you double the salt if you're using the larger jar.
Reduced salt
Salt is not mandatory for the canning process of green beans, it's just there for flavour, so feel free to leave it out if you don't like added salt in your diet. I happen to love salt in these canned green beans. It soaks all the way into the bean through the canning process.
Bean Variety
I grow French Emerite green beans as my main green bean crop. They're not the easiest seeds to find but they are the BEST fresh green pole bean seed. And they an excellent canning bean.
Just make sure to pick your green beans before they start to develop beans inside (you can tell when they're growing beans because the shape of the bean will go from thin and straight to having distinct bumps along it).
Equipment
If you're thinking of buying a pressure canner you've probably discovered there are two types of them: dial gauge pressure canners and weighted gauge pressure canners.
Dial Gauge Canners need their dial gauge to be tested every year to make sure it's accurate. In the United States this test can be performed through a local extension office. In Canada there is no place that tests pressure canner dial gauges.
Weighted Gauge Canners are less popular, but more accurate everywhere except for at high altitudes. Their weights (jigglers) never need testing.
Because there is no way to test gauges here in Canada plus the fact that it's more accurate, I use this Mirro 22 quart weighted gauge canner.
Because of the issues with testing dial gauges, All American (the gold standard of pressure canners) is now selling a dual pressure canner that has both a dial gauge and a weighted gauge. All American canners have the added bonus of not using a rubber seal so you never have to worry about replacing it.
Storage
Keep your canned green beans in a dark cupboard. I know you really want to line them up on an open shelf in the kitchen because they look cool and old-timey, but being exposed to light is not the best for the beans.
Just throw open your cupboard door whenever someone comes over that you want to impress with your canning prowess.
Canned Green Beans
Ingredients
- 1 lb green beans sliced, frenched or whole
- 3 tsps sea salt
Instructions
- Wash and cut the tops off of your beans.
- Cut or french your beans. (frenching are thin ribbons you create with this tool)
- Add ½ teaspoon of salt to bottom of 250 ml jar (8 ounces )
- Fill clean canning jars with beans to 1" from top of jar.
- Pour boiling water over beans to 1" from top of jar.
- Add sealers and rings to jar.
- Process in a pressure canner** for 25 minutes.
Nutrition
Canned green beans. Add them to the list of foods I like that I'm not supposed to like. You can also add truffles to the list of foods I'm supposed to like, but don't.
To be fair, I might just need to try them out of a can. With ketchup.
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I noticed the présure canner you recommended https://amzn.to/3wv7q4B on Amazon doesn’t have gage ??? So how does it work?
Canning présure cookers I have seen all have gage .
Can you clarify please and thank you.
The usual présure canning scare me to tell you the truth.
P.S. I have a pressure cooker not a pressure canner an was told I could not use it to can 🥺 is that true?
When I was 10, I spent a summer with my Oma in Holland. I always helped with dinner, which often meant frenching green beans with a mill she had- beans in the top, turn the handle, and frenched beans poured out the bottom! Wish I had one f those now!
I too spent my childhood (and adulthood) loving fish sticks dipped in ketchup. Ain't nuthin' better, though granulated sugar on home-made and fried in bacon grease potato pancakes comes mighty close. Thanks for sharing the canning tips.
I grew up snapping green beans for days and days and days each summer ... my sister and my fingers bled. Yet my mother would come in from our huge garden with another huge basket of green beans to snap for canning. Oh, the horror! 😂
Anyway...
I was wondering if the time for processing was based on the size of the jar you use? Is this recipe for a pint size and is 25 minutes enough time if your using a quart jar?
Thanks!
Well thanks for this, since I'm tired of freezing beans and no longer have room in the freezer for them, frankly. You didn't mention at how many pounds pressure, however. Some of us have pressure canners with the pressure weight marked at 5, 10, and 15 pounds pressure, so knowing which is the right setting would be good.
I’m wondering the same thing
So I found your post when searching for how to make homemade canned green beans taste like store bought. On day five of being snowed in, we still had plenty of food, but I realised I had very few vegetables put up... mostly because I hate them. I have pickled peppers, pickled okra, dilly beans, and pickled onions, but one can only take so much of the pickled stuff outside of a bloody mary, and while I had plenty of those too, it just wasn't filling the need. I had plenty of canned peaches and pickled pears, too, but what I really wanted were some canned green beans. We managed to find one (the sort that go for 79 cents at the store) and served it up with pork chops (in Shake n Bake for maximum comfort value) and some spicy pickled sweet onions. That salty, buttery, squishy green bean is my life blood. Hoping these fit the bill! Now to find a recipe for canned three bean salad...
They are exactly like canned green beans Jesika! So get growing those beans. ~ karen!
I'm so with you on canned beans...and salt. You lost me with ketchup...yuck.
Ketchup on fish sticks is great but ketchup on salmon croquettes is even better! Childhood trait that I haven't even tried to give up :-)
How does one use a pressure canner? Could you comment on the culture of canners please?
Green beans are best fresh, crisp and tenderly cooked. My only complaint is that they don't last past one night in the fridge.
I have a few posts on pressure canning Veronica. This one is a bit of an introduction to pressure canning. ~ karen!
Hells bells, does this mean if I cook up a mess of fish sticks 'n' ketchup with a side of canned peas (Le Sueur brand I presume), you'd come for dinner? 😏
Um. ~ karen! ;)
Acht....now you post this, after I froze packs of the stuff and ripped the plants out! The packs are unsalted limp things with little taste and to think I could have salted limp things if I had seen this 5 weeks ago!! tsk tsk LOL Why is the water bath not suitable for canning beans?
LOL! Yes, salty limp things are MUCH better than unsalty limp things. All foods are that low acid need to be preserved in a pressure canner as opposed to just a boiling water bath. A simple way to put it is anything with a naturally high acid content is helping to preserve itself. (preserving meaning protecting itself against botulism bacteria) Things with low acid content need to be pressure canned to stop botulism bacteria. ~ karen!