Green Beans, aside from being a common garden staple, are a great addition to any meal. Whether fresh from the garden, steamed as a side, adding a pop of color to your home-cooked soup, or straight from the canning jar as a quick afternoon snack, green beans have a way of fitting any occasion. Another amazing feature is green beans are also relatively easy to plant, grow, cook, and even can! Come along as we journey through the steps of how to can green beans explained for the beginner.

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Canning Safely

Being a low acid food, you will need a pressure cooker to properly and safely can green beans. I do know some people who can beans using a water bath combined with an extremely long processing time, but I do not condone or encourage you to try this. I do NOT consider it a safe method for processing green beans; it also produces a product of greatly reduced quality in my option. For a helpful guide to learning more on the reasons of why low acid foods require processing in a pressure canner and the science behind the method, check out our post on canning meat for the beginner.

Getting started with canning and buying a pressure canner.

Learning to can is something that will pay off for the rest of your life and can benefit your whole family for seasons to come. Although pressure canning can be a bit intimidating to some at first (I know it was for me at the start) with the modern-day safety advancements on some canner brands today, they are easier and safer to use now more than ever! My favorite brand of canner (although it can be a bit on the heavy side to lift since I own a 14 jar capacity model) is the All American Canners. They are made here in the wonderful Great Lakes Region of America, built solid and made to last a lifetime as well as gasket-less, double gauged and with a secure locking lid mechanism. All American also offers a wide selection of canner sizes from which to choose. No, I am not associated with this company; I just really, really love my canner! 🙂

Presto also offers a decent canner for those just starting out. It is cheaper and lighter than the All American, yet good quality for those who don’t know how serious of a home canner they wish to become. However Presto recommends only canning quarts in their pressure canner and not pints, unless you are using it for water bathing and not pressure canning.

On to the wonders of why I love canning green beans.

In my humble opinion, nothing gets better then reaching into the pantry and grabbing a jar of home grown, home canned green beans. (Yes, I’ll admit green beans are my comfort food—after all, who says a comfort food can’t be a vegetable?! 🙂 Especially one that tastes so good and is as versatile as the green bean! I love enjoying them any time of year, but in the cold of winter I like combining them with a jar of fresh canned tomatoes and a jar of canned beef or venison and I find myself well on my way to a delicious soup in the making!

Canning my own food from my garden or local farmers’ market allows me both the ability to know what I’m truly consuming and a better idea of how it was grown. What you put in and on your body is crucial! For it is what your entire system uses to function, heal and fight off illnesses, when you add pesticides and foreign chemicals it puts more strain on your body’s systems ultimately weakening your health. With canned food bought from the store, I have found most brands now contain a plastic liner. This is to prevent the acid in the food from breaking down the metal resulting it a safer product. Yet in my case the thought of metals or plastics getting leached into the foods that I am feeding my children is far from comforting. (Not to mention the added benefit home canned produce provides by way of the education my children receive when we grow and process our own produce as a family.) Plus once you get past the initial investment of buying a canner and jars, the savings of growing and canning your own foods can add up fast, and even more so if you learn to save your own open-pollinated garden seeds and buy canning lids in bulk.

No matter the level of canning knowledge you wish to obtain or how much you intend to can, you will find canning green beans to be a easy and rewarding process! I get satisfaction from just admiring my pantry shelves! 🙂

Canning Green Beans: Basic notes, questions and additional comments.

When selecting green beans to can, you want to make sure to always start with the freshest product, this ensures not only a better quality result, but a safer one as well. Spring is a good time to pre-plan your garden options, if you are planning on canning your beans try to plant enough to meet your canner’s capacity. If it is already later in the year and you have a small garden, and therefore not enough beans to make a full canner load from a single picking, you can pick your beans and place them in a seal-able gallon bag in the refrigerator. This allows you time to accumulate enough for a batch without causing issues in most cases. When doing this I find you want to avoid washing your beans and refrigerate as soon as possible after picking, also try and remove as much air from the bag as possible. But remember this is a couple day extension, not a leave and pick back up next week option.

For those growing many exiting colors and types of beans, yes, you can mix your beans! If you want to can a mix of wax beans, green beans and other fun snap beans feel free too! Just remember if canning purple varieties most will turn green when cooked and therefore not retain their pretty purple color in the end. Also keep in mind, not all beans can equally, some beans varieties will hold up better than others in the canning process.

When canning green beans a string-less variety is often preferred, otherwise you will need to snip them first this is done by simply snipping the tip off your bean and pull down to remove the tough “string” on the sides of the beans. You can do this with a knife as well. If you skip this step with a string bean you will find your final product to be less then satisfying and the “string” rather bothersome and tough to eat. You can both can your beans whole or cut into segments. The choice is fully up to you and how you wish to use them in the future.

For more flavor and variation try adding fresh herbs from your herb garden or a garlic clove to your jars of beans. I use a wide variety of herbs from thyme to peppermint in my beans. Adding herbs during canning infuses the herb’s flavors into the beans, whereas adding them during meal preparation allows you to combine the herb’s flavors with the beans. Or put another way, think peppermint-flavored beans verses beans sprinkled with occasional hints of peppermint, both are good, yet each results in a very different culinary product. Don’t have a Herb Garden? Check out our post on starting one! Backyard Culinary and Medicinal Herb Gardens: Ideas for Adding to or Starting a Kitchen Garden

For proper functioning, your canner should be full. If you don’t have enough beans to fill the canner, but still wish to proceed, you can either can a few jars of another type of food (as long as the pressure and processing times are the same) or even can a jar of water to add to your pantry. Having water already on hand is nice during unexpected power outages.

One bushel of string beans is roughly 24lbs and will fill about 30 pint jars or 20 quart jars. So to make it a little simpler for you that ends up being about 14lbs of green beans needed to fill a canner load of 7 quarts or 9lbs for 9 pints, remember this measurement is an estimate not an exact science and will vary slightly on how tightly you fill your jars etc.

Remember the pressure you use when canning your beans will depend upon the altitude at which you are located. This recipe is for those canning at 0-1,000 ft above sea level using 10lbs of pressure, which happens to include the vast majority of individuals.

Canning Your Beans

You will need:

• Fresh Beans, Green or other snap bean of your choice (See note above for helping you decide how many beans you will need for the jars you intend to can.
• Pressure canner
• canning jars
• canning lids (don’t try and reuse canning lids unless they were specifically design to do so.)
• canning or kosher salt (optional but I highly recommended otherwise the flavor really lacks. A little salt now prevents you from using a lot more salt later.)
• Fresh herbs or garlic, if you desire.

Instructions:

*As always follow the guidelines of your individual pressure cooker at all times for optimal safety.

*This method of canning beans is called “raw-pack” or “cold packing.” I find cold packing to be less work and less steps (like us busy moms really need more work) and find it to result in a superior product all around when compared to using the “hot-pack” method. The hot-pack method requires you to pre-cook and then fill your jars with the hot cooked beans and steaming liquid. When cold packing, you have the added option to get the little ones involved in the canning process safely from an earlier age. This is beneficial in many ways, from passing down a practical skill and offering an educational experience, to spending time together, as well as keeping them busy doing something other then channeling Picasso on your living room walls while you’re in the kitchen trying to can. 😉

Start by washing and prepping your fresh garden beans, removing any stems and/or strings if they are not of a string-less garden variety.

Then cut your beans to the desired size. I normally cut mine to about 1- 1/2 inch pieces thus giving me the most options for using them later as a side or in my green bean casserole and soups or stews.
When pressure canning you do not need to pre-sterilize your jars, unless of course this habit makes you personally feel more comfortable. This added step is unnecessary from a safety perspective due to the level of heat and pressure produced during the processing. For instance if processing at 10lbs of pressure the heat of the steam pressure achieved is 240 degrees Fahrenheit or 115.5 Celsius which is considerably higher than the 212 degrees reached by simply boiling water.

Make sure to inspect your jars for any chips or cracks before using, you don’t want all your hard work to be in vain due to a damaged jar. Keep in mind you will be putting the jars under pressure, so jars that once belonged to your grandma and are older might not fair as well in the canner. Get a tea kettle or pot of water on to boil. Then start filling your jars with beans, being careful to leave one inch of head space at the top of each jar. If adding fresh herbs or garlic cloves to your jars place them in first before adding your green beans. Don’t just add random herbs, stop and think of how you plan on using your home canned beans at a later time, so the flavors will blend accordingly. Peppermint beans are nice as a side, but not necessarily what you want in vegetable soup! I make a variety of types adding single herbs like sage, thyme, rosemary and mint, although experimenting with combinations of herbs is also possible. For more flavor ideas check out our post on flavor profiles.

Simply dumping beans in a jar often leaves large air pockets, a feature that is all the more common when you have little helpers assisting you in filling your jars. I find jiggling the jar slightly or gently shaking it side to side as I add in the beans helps the beans to lay in the jar in a much more organized and even fashion. It also allows you to get more beans in each jar. My science-loving son calls this method “making earthquakes.”
Add one teaspoon of canning or kosher salt to each quart jar, or a ½ teaspoon for pints, if using salt. (I try and cut back on excessive salt wherever I can, but I really recommend adding it when canning vegetables. You actually end up with not only a better tasting and higher quality product, but also end up adding much less salt in the long run, because salt’s flavor is more absorbed when the salt is adding before or early on in the cooking process.) Do not use iodized table salt when canning, because it can discolor your foods or cause cloudiness in the finished product.

Now carefully pour the boiling water over your beans, remembering to leave your one inch of head space at the top.

Carefully wipe the rims of each jar with a clean paper towel or dishcloth to ensure a good seal. Then add lids following the instructions of the lid manufacture.

Place your jars carefully into your pressure canner adding the canning rack and appropriate amount of water into your canner according to your canner’s instructions. Although they all are all made to do the same thing, a canner’s specifics can vary greatly by type and manufacture. It’s best to check what’s recommended for your particular canner on these and the following areas.

Check your seals and make sure your vent hole in lid is clear then secure canner lid according to requirement of your specific canner. Bring up to boil and vent according to your canners instructions, once the canning is properly vented place on the weight at 10lbs of pressure unless you live in a location higher than 1,000 above sea level.

Let your canner come up to pressure then steady your heat so the weight jiggles only around 1-4 times each minute unless of course your canner specifies otherwise. Once you get a feel for your stove and the canner this becomes really easy, though in the beginning you might have to play with it a bit, until you find the temperature sweet spot for your burner settings.
Set your timer and process your jars according to the size of jars used.

PROCESSING TIMES ARE 20 MINUTES FOR PINTS or 25 MINUTES FOR QUARTS.

Start the timer once your canner has reached the required pressure.

Once processing time is done turn off the heat and allow your canner to drop down to zero pressure naturally. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT! TRYING TO OPEN YOUR CANNER BEFORE ALLOWING IT TO RETURN TO 0 PRESSURE CAN BE VERY DANGEROUS!

After your canner has arrived at 0 pressure, it is now safe to open. However I try and allow my canner to cool a bit more before opening, since the sudden change in temperature when removing the very hot jars can cause them to break or encourage the loss of needed liquid.

If still canning at midnight, I sometimes leave the last batch over night and take out the jars in the morning. However if your canner cools fast you don’t want to leave over night due to the fact if left at a semi-warm temperature your beans can achieve what is called as a “flat sour.” This does not affect the safety of the beans in anyway, but it can really downgrade the taste! It causes a sour off-taste and smell, and is caused by allowing just processed low-acid foods to remain in the warm zone for too long after processing by either keeping them in the canner for too long or covering with a towel etc. “Flat sour” is not to be confused with “flat sour spoilage” (botulism) which is harmful and caused from trying to process over ripe already turning/spoiling foods as well allowing precooked foods to stand too long before processing. The latter most often being a risk of using the hot-pack method for those who loose track of time or have to pause to feed kids etc. This is yet another reason why the cold-pack method is my method of choice.

If you should hear a pop sound while the canner is cooling, do not borrow trouble and instantly assume your hard earned jars are breaking. This is a normal acoustic part of the canning process and is actually a sign of your jars sealing.

With all the uncertainty in the world today, learning how to can could be one of the best things you decide to do this spring! I hope this will help you on your canning journey as you discover more options to preserve the taste of summer for your family.

Wishing everyone bountiful gardens this coming season, the Homesteading Hen

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