Last year, I cut them up, blanched them, and froze them, which was fine, but was wondering if I should even bother pressure canning them, as I'm sure it would over cook them. I do like canned green beans from the store, but was thinking that if I pressure canned my fresh beans, they would be just like store bought in texture.

What's your favorite way to put up green beans...blanch/freeze or pressure can?

Its strictly personal preference. Some don't like frozen ones at all and would only even consider canning them. others take just the opposite position - frozen great, canned yucky. :)

Personally wife and I much prefer canned GB over frozen and the kids and grandkids all refuse to eat frozen ones. Don't like either the texture or the flavor. But many others will disagree.

Add to that the shelf life - much longer for canned than frozen and no concern about power outages. A 3 or 4 year old jar of canned beans are as good as the day they were canned. No way can they be frozen that long.

It is your choice.

Dave

Now if you were to ask me about peas, you'd get the reverse response ;)

It's all a matter of taste. What does your family enjoy?

pattypan - I don't think there's a strict rule you can go by. You can try tasting them to see if they're fresh enough. I don't have enough plants to can what I picked in one day, so I always have to store them in the fridge for a few days. I never, ever add anything else to the jars. You can always add that stuff to your recipe after you open the jars, when you go to use them in a recipe.

Just add the seasonings when you reheat and drain the beans, it will be less diluted that way anyway.

If it takes 3 days to pick a canner load I'd do the beans that day so the oldest beans are only 2 days old - I don't even like to wait that log to freeze mine but life happens. I did give beans picked Monday to food bank on Thursday (I wouldn't even bring them to market on Wed), I hope people ate them right away.

I'd just try to keep them all around the same size (diameter) so that they cook evenly, I don't get that picky about lengths, if you can keep them about the same length too that's best but beans come in different lengths and I certainly wouldn't compost the ends of the longer ones, though it's less waste to cut them into 1-or 2-inch long pieces instead of 4- to 5-inch long and then have a bunch of short pieces left over. But 1/2 inch difference isn't going to matter.

I guess I like the versatility in texture with frozen, but you are right, if the power goes out I will be crying.