"michael adams" wrote in message
...

"Griff" wrote in message
...
Hi,

How is the best way to freeze Runner & Broad Beans?

Assuming that they can be frozen OK that is.

Cheers,

Griff.



My method anyway.

For runners and bigger french beans (hunter\largo variety)
at least, you need* to chop the beans up first. Depending on how
much time you have, its a great help of you chop them between
the beans, rather than through individual beans as this means
you don't have half beans falling out. But this depends on
how much time you have, i.e to chop individual beans.

* I don't know if this is gospel but I always have. And I will have
got the advice from an authoratitive source, at some point.

The chopped beans are put in a perforated pasta insert and lowered
into a stockpot of fast boiling water for two minutes - two minutes
after the water has returned to a fast boil that is.

The pasta insert (and beans) is then immediately taken out
of the boiling water, shaken to drain off as much water as possible,
and immediately dunked in a similarly sized stockpot of iced water
which was prepared beforehand. Although not so quickly, that beans
float away over the top of the stockpot.

Once the beans are thoroughly cooled, say 10 secs, they're taken out of
the
ice cold water, the pasta insert is shaken to get rid of as much water
as possible, and then they're tipped out onto clean tea towels to be
dried off for around 30 secs maximum. They're then spread out on a sheet
of polythene itself covering an appropriate largish size piece of
hardboard\plywood whatever*. The beans are then frozen on the sheet which
is put in the freeezer for a couple of hours. When frozen through, they
can then be gathered up and bagged up or stored in any containers as you
see fit. This should keep them separate, and easy to use.

Depending on the size of your freezer - chest or upright and the
size of the pots available, you may neeed two smaller sheets of
hardboard, or whatever. Or do smaller batches etc etc.

WHat a lot of time consuming and unnecessary palaver though. Why bother
when you don't need to?

The message
from "pammyT" fenlandfowl @talktalk.net contains these words:

Depending on the size of your freezer - chest or upright and the
size of the pots available, you may neeed two smaller sheets of
hardboard, or whatever. Or do smaller batches etc etc.

WHat a lot of time consuming and unnecessary palaver though. Why bother
when you don't need to?

So you can take out just the quantity you require.

I do that with mushrooms and many vegetables, so I can take (say) two
mushrooms, half a dozen slivers of carrot, a similar quantity of
parsnip, some cubes of swede (or ice-cube blocks of bashit neep), a
handful of sprouts, two rashers of bacon, etc etc. (Or pro rata for
appetite, or the number of people to consume the meal.)

I have a plastic tray, and I lay a sheet of polythene on it, lay out the
stuff to be frozen, then when that is full, place another sheet of
plastic on top and repeat the process.

I do it with sausages, fish, liver, etc, and have made a frame from a
wire coathanger on which to hang (allegedly) self-sealing ice-egg bags.
I use two clothes pegs to secure the bag, place a small funnel in the
opening, and pour in stock. This makes handy units for adding to dishes,
gravy, etc.

But I do not freeze beans separately - kept for any length of time they
become partially dehydrated due to the amount of air included in the
bag. I freeze things like sliced runners in the water in which they were
blanched, usually in single portion units - they keep for years like
that.

--
Rusty
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