I've grown dry beans before, and snap/green beans before, but this was the first year that i've read and heard about fresh shelled / shelly beans and I wanted to try them. I grew several varieties that can be used as shelly beans (Bosnian, Turkey Craw, Bridgewater) and have been waiting for them to ripen. It has been raining for 4 days, I went outside today, and I have a ton of shelly beans ready to pick.

I'm a little unclear how to deal with them and would love some advice.

There are too many for fresh eating, so I will be cooking some and freezing some for later use.

As far as freezing, is this the correct procedure: Shell the beans. Blanch them (the individual beans, already shelled?) for about 3 minutes. Then ice bath for another 3 minutes. Then simply drain and freeze. It is the individual beans that get blanched though, right, not the whole shells ... ie you shell them first, not after?

As far as cooking, do you have to boil them at all to cook them? I have found some nice sounding recipes that involve boiling them in water or stock for about 10 minutes or so, then adding other things. Can you cook them without boiling? Can you saute them, just throw them in a pan with onion/butter/herbs etc ... or when people talk about sauteing them, is that AFTER having boiled them for 10 minutes first?

I'm sorry for asking what must be a common question again, but I find myself faced with a large pile of beans, a short amount of time, trouble with the search feature, and questions/confusion on how to prepare them, lol :) Thanks ...

Correct.

As for using, yes most will need to be boiled for a brief period (until al dente) before any other use such as saute or stir fry or in salads as they will still be very hard and hard to digest if not. One reason why pressure canning them works so well.

For a side dish, boiling them for 20-30 mins until fork tender in a broth with added ingredients such as onions, garlic, peppers, and other seasonings is a common method of preparing them down south. They can also be baked, added to soups and stews, etc. They can be used in jambalaya and other creole recipes, a dish called Hoppin' John (a personal favorite), dirty rice recipes, and even mashed and used like refried beans.

For freezing, after blanching and chilling, drain well and spread out in thin layer on cookie sheets to quick freeze before packaging.

Dave

As thaw and reheat beans, they are gone by year's end. This is the old Southern way to cook shellies. I allow three hours minimum for the slow cooking.

If I'm going to set up the whole thing for blanching, I may as well just boil another 25 minutes and freeze fully cooked, right? Or is there some reason why that wouldn't work?

What we don't eat that night, I freeze. I freeze them in wide mouth canning jars, leaving adequate head space for expansion. I defrost them in the microwave (or under running water) just enough to dump them from the freezer jar into the pot to reheat.

I have never gone the route of blanching and freezing the raw beans because they come out of the freezer exactly the way I'm going to serve them. Served hot over fresh cornbread...mmmmmmmm.

I hope that helps.

Jill