Over the weekend we canned what I think will be the last canning of green beans this summer. We love green beans so we preserve most of what we grow.
We don’t quite make it to the number of jars Granny always did, but we aim for having at least enough to open a jar every week. Most years we get above that number and that gives us some extra jars to open for big gatherings.
Granny taught me to can green beans. You can see the method she uses here.
We never strayed from Granny’s method of canning beans until last year. I was in a big hurry one day and thought why don’t we try the raw pack method and see if we can tell any difference in the taste. That method skips the step of blanching the beans like Granny does.
I marked all the jars we raw packed and actually forgot about them until sometime last winter when I grabbed a jar of them before cooking supper one night.
I didn’t tell anyone about the “test” we were about to eat. I cooked the jar as I normally do and no one said anything about the green beans being different. I didn’t notice anything different about them either.
So this year we’ve used the raw pack method for all the beans we’ve canned.
I never gave any thought to the various methods of canning until I started this blog. I quickly learned folks have different preferences when it comes to preserving food for later use. Many believe only the current FDA canning guidelines should be followed, while others feel comfortable doing what their mother, grandmother, or other people in their lives have always done.
The raw pack method of pressure canning green beans is an approved method and a quick internet search will turn up the information you need if you would like to try it in the future.
Growing food and preserving the bounty for our family is one of our favorite things to do.
Last night’s video: Cutting Back Summer Growth, Pulling Out Plants, How Okra Grows & an Update on Granny.
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The photo at the top really brings back a memory for me (as so many of your posts and videos do!) of helping my granny can beans. I LOVED washing the beans in the big enamel wash pan because I got to PLAY in the WATER but I was still helping. Thanks for keeping those memories alive for me.
I have watched last nights’ video and I agree with Matt, this hot, dry weather is just about more than I can stand. Because of my age or maybe some medicine I now take, I can no longer stay out and work in it like I use too. The cold weather, especially wind, also bothers me a lot more now. At least in the winter you can put clothes on to help stay warm, but you can strip down to your birthday suit and still be hot during the summer unless sitting in the middle of a deeper hole in a creek. My favorite seasons are in this order -Fall, Spring, Winter, and then Summer. I do like the longer daylight days of summer, but not the heat. I have a cross country truck driving friend and he has been to some of the states with these high temperatures and he will say it is no worse to him than these mid 90 days and high humidity out here. I don’t remember God ever calling me up on the day before and asking me what kind of weather I wanted tomorrow.
I will continue to pray for Granny, seems like she is not giving in to this cancer. It was said she was still trying to hoe her garden.
Mama canned her green beans the exact same way as Granny. I don’t think there is anything any prettier than jars of green beans sitting on a shelf in a pantry. Hearing the encouraging news about Granny is a blessing. Thank you for all the updates about her as we continue to pray for her each and every day.
My mom always raw packed her green beans and that’s what I’ve always done to. It is easier and ahold lot faster. When you do it by yourself, you have to do things fast and easy.My beans didn’t produce as many as I’d liked this yr. My tomatoes sure did and cucumbers. I canned 91 jars tomatoes and bout 50 jars cucumbers. Only 40 beans.Tell Granny hi and Prayers for her.
We had a small tub garden this year, which didn’t produce a big harvest like I had been use to in the ground gardens. We only planted the basic tomatoes, green peppers, banana peppers hot/mild, some lettuce and a few onions. I miss fresh green beans, cabbage, beets, radishes and other tasty vegetables I enjoy, which is pretty much anything that grows in a garden. My husband only likes the basic vegetables that we grew. Them green beans are going to be really tasty this winter!
Learning every day from your blog and YouTube. Hoping to start a raised bed when I retire next year so you are quirlte a help.
I like to blanch my beans before I cook, can or freeze them. I bring them to a boil for five minutes then drain and rinse them well. If I’m going to eat them right away, I’ll add clean water and return them to the stove. If I’m going to can them I will rinse them in cold water after blanching then pack them in jars, fill with boiling water and process them in the pressure cooker. (The boiling water is only to shorten the length of time it takes to bring the canner up to pressure.)
This year I’ve been freezing one person portions of green beans. I blanch them like in the other two ways mentioned above but for freezing I rinse in hot water before spreading them out on parchment paper to dry off. Then I freeze them solid, portion them into vacuum sealer bags, vacuum and seal them before returning them to the freezer.
I didn’t really like green beans until a few years ago. I was cooking a mess for my wife when I noticed a foamy, purplish-gray, scum hanging around the sides of the pot. I decided to rinse the beans and the pot before returning them to the stove. No more of the yucky stuff came back and in the end I liked the beans much better. Further experiments showed the same results for me. To me it’s not how well they keep but how they taste.
I don’t worry about what the government agencies say. The FDA regulations are only for commercial food processors. They can’t tell home gardeners what to do! The USDA guidelines are for home gardeners but they are only guidelines. Bloggers and Youtubers who tell you different are just full of it.
Take everything you read, hear or see on the internet with a grain of salt. Skepticism is a virtue. If it’s working and nobody you have known, or heard tell of, has died of or even gotten sick from botulism or ptomaine from your old family recipe then keep doing it like you’re doing it!
Thank you, Tipper, for including the video today. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to you and your dear husband.
The news you shared about Granny was certainly most welcome. May God strengthen and heal her either in this Appalachian life or in the Heavenly life to come.
The discussion you and Matt had about Matt climbing trees with a chain saw brought back memories of watching my logger husband do similar things. What joy he had in his strength and skill!
Thank you, Tipper, for the kindly manner in which you present Blind Pig and the Acorn. You are an encouragement to me.
My green beans have been gone for a few weeks. The last time I picked them I got a peck or more of beautiful beans. When I started breaking them, they were as rigid as a stick from baking in the long stretch of heat and lack of rain. I have always preferred frozen green beans over canned. The frozen method is also an easier way to preserve veggies, but I end up losing some to power outages every year.
Praying for Granny everyday.
The last two nights have been rough and sleepless for me. It’s just this virus, still. I am tired of sleeping sitting up, but I can’t lay down to sleep just yet. For a few days I feel like I am doing better and I can live life normally again, and then for a few days I feel like I am forever going to be sick. Back and forth it goes. On my bad days, as long as I am just laying around, I think I could build a house all by myself. So on my good days I get up and try! Alas, I find out I’m not ready yet. Kind of like Noah releasing the dove while waiting for the waters to recede. That dove kept coming back for awhile until it finally was able to fly off to resume it’s life again. This morning at 3:30 a.m., after pacing the floor all the hours before, praying, watching westerns on tv, and even eating a bowl of Rocky Road ice cream (yes I did!), I decided I would watch the playlist I made of canning and preserving foods on my phone. That relaxed me so much, making me feel very comfortable and cozy, that I finally drifted off to sleep at 4:30. I did sleep solid for 2 1/2 hours. Yay! I loved your blog post about canning green beans this morning. It made that wonderful, old fashioned comfortable feeling continue in me as I have crawled through my morning. I can just smell all the goodness coming from winter meals made from summer’s hard work! Yum!!
Donna. : )
I always thought by blanching the beans you would get more in a jar. Maybe the older generation did this to get more in a jar for their large families.
Love and Prayers to Granny
When I was 22, my grandmother bought me a pressure canner for Christmas. I still use it. Water bath canning, pressure canning, freezing, good tools, and the Ball Book are used every year. I am going to making some pineapple jam today. Winn Dixie had BOGO pineapples so I got 4. I will add to my blackberry and pear jams so far. We did not get any good Georgia peaches this year. I am in S. FL so I am setting out my garden after Labor Day. I pray for Granny and y’all every day. Your video of the girls singing “Christmas Time Is Coming” made my day. It’s my favorite. The Carter Family does it too.
This is the first year in 47 that I have can’t a single jar of green beans. We planted one row this spring to eat fresh but decided to wait to plant fall beans for canning since the fall beans turned out so much better last year. And then the drought hit and the temperatures over 100° for a week and more to come. We have been watering one row to keep it alive hoping it will produce as the weather cools off. Time will tell.
My mom always canned hot packed green beans (blanched). And I did too until a few years back I started doing the raw pack method as my sister-in-law does. We can’t tell any difference either except maybe you can get a few more beans in the jar when they are hot packed. They have always been a staple in my pantry so I don’t know what I’ll do this year without them. Thank goodness I’ve got a few jars left from last year.
I enjoy your garden videos so much and they always inspire me to get outside and get something done in the garden.
I’m done canning for the summer. We’ve canned beans and spaghetti sauce and froze corn and tomatoes. I might freeze a little more tomatoes, but our freezers are getting full, and I’m tuckered out. I think we might take a break from gardening next year.
Praying for Granny and all of her family. Funny how in 70 years I’ve never once heard of anyone being sick much less dying of home canned food. I’m far more afraid of the FDA, sorry to say. Love to you all.
Nancy, all I can say is me too, today’s experts, I like to call them to call them exspurts scare me. I think many of them have more education than sense. They are educated idiots.
Back in my bush Aust life, Mum did a lot of canning, but always fruit and no veges, these were from the garden or store brought. After the foxes has got the last of the chooks (Chickens) Dad had converted the old chook run into a vege garden. It was 90 square yards, with a high thatched roof. He pumped water from the creek into sprinklers just under the roof line. I recently got some new green beans to try your roasted beans (very nice) and what a difference, the taste of the remaining beans over store frozen.
I canned my last green beans yesterday afternoon as well. I’ll be laying my garden to rest this weekend, all except the tomatoes.
Tipper, this year I did the raw pack method as well. My sweet friend who let me use her much bigger kitchen showed me to raw pack. So much easier and faster. I know there’s no dip in the taste cause for years she’s blessed me with her beans & I had no idea she raw packed them. Have a blessed day.
I’ve done both the raw pack and precook method for greenbeans and couldn’t tell a difference in the taste at all. I find when I precook the beans I can pack more into the canning jars and that is about the only advantage. I do a raw pack when I’m canning my tomatoes and again no difference in the taste. One method is a little quicker than the other.
Some of our tomato plants have already died due to the heat I guess. My garden, while productive, has not done as well this year. I’m still waiting on my eggplant to produce, they’re blooming with tiny eggplants, so hopefully we’ll get a couple at least. We grew our Rattlesnake beans for dried beans this year. They make excellent soup beans as we discovered last year. I have plenty of greenbeans on the shelf for a couple years, so this years crop is to be dried.
We’re still praying for Granny, you and your family, for wisdom, healing and God’s direction.
My mom and dad always grew a huge garden and canned enough green beans to share with me. They really miss their gardens after moving to an apartment. They would work all day and late into the night snapping and washing and canning. Mom always says it was just so satisfying to see all those quart jars of beautiful beans lined up on shelves for winter. I would like to have a bigger garden next year so we can grow enough to have for canning. We have to build fences around ours to keep out the deer that roam through the woods and into our yard at night to nibble on acorns and fresh grass. I am going to our garden this morning to pick whatever peppers, hot and sweet, are ready. I am planning to can as many as possible today. We love peppers in sauce to have with dinner and on sandwiches all winter. I love looking at the colorful jars when they are all finished. I enjoyed your video last night. We have been cleaning our garden off as well. Please keep us posted about your mama and I will keep her in my prayers. Have a wonderful week everyone.
growing and preserving the food we eat is the most satisfying thing. I for one won’t buy produce from just anywhere. I am leery of how and what is grown commercially when 90% of corn is genetically modified what else is. I eat my own, from a trusted farmer, or organic.
Granny’s way of canning green beans and Mama’s way of canning green beans are identical. Reading the blog brought many memories of many summers canning green beans along with tomatoes and soup mix. I have a healthy respect for pressure cookers having heard frightening tales from Mama about the damage they could wreak. I was the keeper of the pressure cooker heat to keep it at 10 pounds!!!
Hard work all summer long but such good food!!!
I still have Mama’s pressure cooker, a Presto from the 40s or 50s.
I did watch all the things you did concerning cleaning up the garden, giving info about the ‘okry’ but the best was talking about Granny. Praying for her ‘wellness’ and whatever God wants is what we will accept. We know that His will be done. I also appreciate your honesty, it is so rewarding to have someone actually tell the truth. Honesty has been a pet peeve of mine for as long as I can remember. I have always cautioned my girls and grands…you don’t have to have a good memory if you tell the truth and integrity will win out. God Bless and looking forward to your nest one.
Tipper could I have your address I want to send Granny a card!
My email is joannaandguy@gmail.com
Thanks
To me there is nothing much prettier , comforting or taste better than pantry shelves full of home grown canned vegetables. In the earlier years of my life, my wife would can or freeze vegetables that we had grown. Back when I was a child during the 50 and 60’s, my family along with other families around me not only worked full time jobs but would also have large gardens of an acre or more. Most had the largest non commercial chest freezers (my mother in law had 2 of these plus an upright freezer) you could buy. The freezers and pantries would be full of either froze or canned food by the start of winter. It used to be you only had to worry about rabbits in your garden or coons in your corn, now between deer, the hot dry summers that are becoming more and more normal, along with the cost of the seed, fertilizer and tractor fuel if you have a large garden, it sometimes seems it is no longer worth it. It is just cheaper and easier to buy it a farmer’s market. A friend that now tries to have a large garden and put up a lot of his families food was telling me he had either heard or read than the government (maybe FDA) claims this home home grown, canned or frozen food is not safe for us to eat! I reckon if that is true along with the other things that the ones of my generation did that was said to be unsafe, none of us should be alive. We are miracles.
I will listen to the update on Granny later, I pray it will be good news.
We love green beans too! I don’t can any, but we’ve found some commercially can ones we like. BUT, there is nothing like fresh green beans. Something that made my mouth water was the fresh fish fried by that river bed. That had to be delicious! I’m sure that was a fun family time. Prayers for all! Take care and God bless ❣️