In article , John
writes
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?

Hi John, great to hear from you again.

We have been freezing runner beans successfully for many years - we only
today had some for lunch and they were delicious. Varieties do vary in
suitability for freezing, but the far more important factor is how and
when they are dealt with. Runner beans for freezing should be picked
very young, and thus tender, and they should be in the freezer within
minutes of being cropped (like the lorry-loads of peas which go hurtling
through your village in summertime!). We pick ours first thing in the
morning, string them whether they need it or not, then run them through
a bean-slicer, pack them loose and flat in freezer bags, then pop them
into the fast-freeze section of one of our three deep freezers.

We don't blanch any home produced crops for freezing now, though we did
do that years ago. If the goods are fresh, of good quality and dealt
with properly, there should be no need for blanching. Commercial growers
are obliged to blanch for freezing, but their plants are raised
differently from home growers.
--
Alan & Joan Gould - North Lincs.