"Judith Lea" wrote in message
...
In article , michael adams
writes
How exactly did you prepare the beans ? Did you blanch them for instance,
before freezing ?

Yes, I did, drained them, let them cool and then put them into
appropriately sized bags, sucked out the air and twist sealed - could I
have improved on this, would it be better to just freeze without
blanching?

It's generally accepted that if its properly done home frozen beans are
quite acceptable.

Michael, do you have any tips on how to do it properly?
--
Judith Lea


I did a long post on this last year Judith, unfortunately the Google
archive seems to be playing up at the moment. Not that I'm saying
it's all the last word on the subject but it would save repeating it
all. Oh anyway. Off the top of my head with spelling and grammar
mistakes thrown in.
Top and tail and chop the beans into chunks.
Use a stock pot with a wire basket - or a pasta insert. Only pick and
freeze in (smallish) batches just big enough to fill the stock pot. Bring
the water to the boil, plunge the beans in the container in, and then once
the beans have been boiling "vigorously" for 3 minutes, plunge straight into
freezing water.
Prepared beforehand with plenty of ice cubes from the fridge. And maybe
bottles of water put in the fridge. Once cooled, say 30 seconds remove at
once and dry thoroughly between kitchen towels, tea towels etc. Lay flat
on a sheet of polythene on a board and leave that in the freezer until
the beans are individually frozen. Maybe an hour. No upper limit. Then bag
them up, squeezing air out of the bags as you go, and tie with the bag tie.
As I understand it, speed is of the essence when reducing the temperature
of the beans when taking them out of the boiling water hence plunging them
into the iced water.
It can mean taking a bit of trouble, especially as its only possible to do
one batch a day, basically. Unless you have loads of stockpots I suppose.
But once you get the hang of it - and most important they taste alright a
few months later, then it might not seem so bad,


michael adams

....