String Beans
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the beans
String and cut the beans as you would for the table.
Boil water with a little coarse sea salt.
Add a few handfuls of beans and let them boil once.
Skim the beans into a common crock.
Pickle and store
Pour cold brine over the beans, similar to cucumber pickles.
Store and care for them like pickles.
For vibrant green color, add a pinch of alum while cooking.
Use the beans
To use, freshen the beans overnight, then boil and prepare as usual.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Young and tender string beans
- Form the main body of the pickle, and their tenderness sets the crisp-to-soft texture of the finished dish.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the cooking water and helps draw moisture and flavor into the beans during pickling.
- Cold brine
- Preserves the beans in acidic or salty liquid and gives them their pickled flavor.
The step that matters
Boiling the beans only once. Beans that boil too long turn dull and soft. A single brief boil keeps them tender yet firm enough to hold up through pickling and later cooking.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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