on a backdrop of dark wood, a mason jar filled with green beans and liquid, sealed with a white top with a blue nipple for fermentation exhaust

Garlic Fermented Green Beans

Cooking with Jane, Recipes, , , ,

We got beans this week! The first of many handfuls of delightfully crunchy beans always reminds me of my time working on the farm and all the great conversations we would have as we picked fistful after fistful of green and yellow beans. Hard on the back, but good for the laughs. Jane got a new lil fermentation kit this week, so we thought we’d give it a try! We’re following basically this recipe, with a few alterations, and we’ll have to report back to you in a few weeks how it went, since the “cook time” is at least 3 days, and likely longer for the texture and flavour we’re looking for.

on a backdrop of dark wood, a mason jar filled with green beans and liquid, sealed with a white top with a blue nipple for fermentation exhaust
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Garlic Fermented Beans

Ingredients

  • 2-3 handfuls green beans
  • 2 tsp salt with no additives – ie not iodized or with any stabilizers added
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 2 Tbsp of culture optional, could also use ACV, but apparently beans don’t need starter!
  • water enough to cover (chlorine-free – if you leave tap water open in a dish for about 24 hours or boil it for 15mins and then cool it, that should get rid of most of the chlorine present)
  • spices of your choice! we went with black peppercorns and red pepper flakes, but you could go down the dill route, or even add sliced green onions!

Instructions

  1. Dissolve the salt in a 1/4 cup of water in the bottom of a glass jar.
  2. Wash the green beans and trim the tops. Peel the garlic clove. If you’re using a pint jar, then beans will need to be trimmed to fit.
  3. Pack the jar with the beans and garlic. Add the culture (or ACV) and fill the jar with water, leaving 1 inch of headroom at the top of the jar.

  4. Use a weight to make sure that the beans remain below the brine. Cap with a lid that will let CO2 escape as the ferment bubbles. (We just got a lil kit, but you can make your own a lot of different ways)

  5. Place the jar somewhere dark (a kitchen cupboard is perfect) to ferment for 2-3 days. We might try to ferment for longer and see how it goes. But after 3 days the beans will be fermented but still crisp. Store in the refrigerator and eat within 1 month.

  6. Fermentation can be used for long-term preservation but I think this recipe is not quite fine tuned for that. However, if you go to the link above, the author has guides and stuff for making that happen!