Dilly Beans: Voted “Best Snack of All Time”
For lovers of fermented foods, Welcome to the wonderful world of green beans.
There’s nothing better than dilly beans. Whether they’re next to a plate of cheese and crackers, on a sandwich, or straight from the jar in the middle of winter when you’re diseased of potatoes and pasta, they’re the perfect snack or addition to any meal.
Below is an excerpt from Wild Fermentation By Sandor KatzIt has been adapted to the web.
How to make green beans
Pickling foods in vinegar is not a fermentation process. In brine pickling, discussed in Chapter 5, vegetables are preserved by lactic acid, which is produced by the action of microorganisms on the vegetables. Vinegar pickling uses a fermentation product, vinegar, but the acidity of the vinegar and heat treatment prevent the action of microorganisms. Cucumbers pickled in vinegar do not contain live bacterial cultures.
According to Terre Vivante, a French ecological education center that focuses on organic gardening and food preservation using old-world food preservation techniques, “in the elderly days, pickled cucumbers were always lactic-acid fermented and then poured into vinegar for the sole purpose of stabilizing them for commercial employ.”
Indeed, the great advantage of vinegar pickling over lactic acid fermentation is that pickles pickled in vinegar will last (almost) a lifetime, while pickles pickled in brine will last for weeks or months, but rarely yearsand definitely not forever. Cookbooks are full of recipes for pickling in vinegar, so I’ll just give you one: green beans, which my father makes every summer in his garden and serves to family and friends all year round.
RECIPE: DIY Green Beans
Period of time: 6 weeks
Special equipment: Closed-top canning jars: 1 ½ pint/750 milliliter jars work best because their height is perfect for the length of the green beans
Ingredients
- Green Beans
- Garlic
- Salt (my dad swears by rough kosher salt, but sea salt is fine too)
- Whole dried chili peppers
- Celery seeds
- Fresh dill (flowering tops or leaves are best)
- Distilled white vinegar
Water
Process
1. Estimate how many jars you will fill with your green beans. Wash the jars thoroughly and line them up in a row.
2. Place 1 garlic clove, 1 teaspoon (5 milliliters) salt, 1 whole red chili pepper, ¼ teaspoon (1.5 milliliters) celery seed, and a flowering dill or petite bunch of dill leaves in each jar. Then fill the jar with beans set on end, packing them into the jar as tightly as possible.
3. For each filled jar, measure 1 cup (250 milliliters) of vinegar and 1 cup (250 milliliters) of water. Bring the vinegar and water mixture to a boil, then pour it into the bean and spice jars, to within ½ inch (1 centimeter) of the top of the jar.
4. Close the jars and place them in a vast pot of boiling water, cook for 10 minutes.
Let the green beans sit for at least 6 weeks to allow the flavors to combine, then open the jars as desired and enjoy. My father serves these dilly beans as an appetizer. Heat-treated pickles can be stored for years without refrigeration.