In article ,
John wrote:
Following up on a thread from earlier in the year.

I grew runner beans this year - they were absolutely wonderful - lived on
them for months. However I tried to freeze the excess, followed the advice
given in the earlier thread and *didn't* blanche them before freezing. They
are *horrible* - tough, bad flavour etc. - even after cooking for *much*
longer than the fresh ones !! They're all about to be thrown out :-(

I'm wondering what went wrong? Advice given by amongst others was from Alan
Gould (I think Alan knows what he's talking about grin). Could it have
been the variety? ("Best of all" - or something like that - I've lost the
packet). Did I misunderstand something the freezing process?

In my view, no. Runner beans do not freeze well, for some reason,
though French beans do and broad beans freeze excellently. If you
want to freeze runners, my experience is that they need to be VERY
young - before they have changed from their dark green 'furry'
infant appearance to their lighter 'harder' mature one.

If yours are tough, almost certainly they were too old. I would
blanche them myself, but I drop not too many of them into boiling
water, bring back to the boil, and cool in cold water immediately.
Even then, I tend not to bother with runners.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
Email:
Tel.: +44 1223 334761 Fax: +44 1223 334679