This year I grew (again) Romano type beans. The seed is from Hungary. They make great soup, chilli, whatever else you like.

Also grew Lena (small white soup or "other" bean). These were all plenty mature at harvest, so I shelled and dried all of the Lena.

I grew Aztec red kidney beans for the first time. They went in late and have a long mature time, like 120 days.

So by the end of the season, I had immature Romanos and Aztec kidneys. I also had plenty of dry Romanos but the season was so long that they were working up a new crop! Thinking that they might just shrivel up and be not worth much, I decided to can them. My neighbours routinely pick the Romanos to eat fresh during the summer. I figured that if they can be eaten young, then they can be canned.

The pressure canning time for mature (dried, and then soaked) kidney beans is 75 minutes for pints. All times here are for 10# and pint jars. For black-eyed peas (my young beans are more like a softer bean/pea), the time is 40 minutes. Also 40 minutes are Lima beans, which really my big soft fluffy baby beans remind me of... to be on the safe side, I did them for 75 minutes. The downside/risk is overcooked beans. Lots of what we get these days is over-cooked. I can live with that. Overcooked home-grown is better than store-bought canned. To compensate for the over-cook idea, I skipped boiling them for 30 minutes before canning. They did not need cooking and would cook plenty enough in the canner.

These young beans swelled significantly so I removed 1" of beans from the top of each jar. I added an extra inch of liquid. I used NO salt (it is not required for preserving, the book says, only for flavor to taste).

In both cases, the results look yummy (like big fluffy canned beans, but much larger). I feel confident that they are safely preserved and better than anything from the store, so next time I have a recipe or a need for "a can of beans"... well, the taste test will be posted here.

I make my chilli "sans beans" (not to take up space with the beans) but it does happen that I want chilli sooner than it takes to get dried beans ready to cook, so I now have some cans of beans ready to use.

If anyone has any similar experience, I would love to hear about it. I have never grown beans before except for the Romanos (3 or 4 years now growing them).

This post was edited by Randy.Canada on Sat, Oct 26, 13 at 13:19