Can You Freeze Green Beans?

What happens when you freeze green beans

Green beans are among the best vegetables to freeze, and USDA’s line covers the whole family — green, wax, fava, lima, snow, sugar snap, and soybeans. Blanching sets the color and stops the enzymes that would otherwise leave them olive-drab and hay-flavored by spring. The pods soften a little, so a thawed bean sits closer to steamed than raw, but it keeps real bite if you cooked it briefly and chilled it fast. Skip the blanch and the difference shows up within a month.

How to freeze it right

1. Top and tail the beans and cut them to the length you cook with.
2. Boil just until the green deepens and the raw squeak goes, then plunge into ice water.
3. Drain well and dry them; a wet bean freezes to its neighbors.
4. Freeze loose on a tray, then bag with the air pressed out.
5. Date the bag.

Thawing and using it

Cook them from frozen — into soup, into curry, into a hot pan with garlic, or into boiling water for barely any time at all. For a salad, boil them briefly from frozen and shock them in ice water to bring the color back. Thawing them raw first only makes them soggy.

Can you refreeze it?

Fridge-thawed beans can be refrozen safely; they come back limper and duller each round, so freeze them in the amount one dinner needs.