One of the ways to save green beans is by blanching them with a steamer or you can boil them. Personally, I find blanching by boiling to be one of the easiest ways to save green beans. Simply drop the beans into a pot of rapidly boiling water, then return to a light boil and cook for about 3 minutes.

Pro Tip: “Work in small batches, no more than a pound of beans to a gallon of boiling water.”Your water should return to a light boil within about a minute, if not you are overcrowding the pot, and should try fewer beans on the next batch.

The goal here is not to cook them all the way through but lightly. This will stop the enzyme process which otherwise causes a loss of color, flavor, and texture.

Lift the beans out of the boiling water and drain the excess water. Immediately place them into your ice water and allow them to sit in the ice water for a good three or four minutes to stop any internal heat from continuing to cook the beans. Then lift them out into a strainer and let them drain in a strainer for a couple of minutes to remove excess water.

Spread the blanched, cooled, and drained green beans out on a sheet pan in a single layer. It doesn’t need to be perfect but the less crowded the beans are the better your results will be. Place the sheet pans of beans into the freezer, undisturbed for at least an hour or two.

Remove the pans from the freezer and place the beans into large freezer storage containers or large freezer bags. Squeeze out as much air as possible, seal, and label the packages with the month and year.

One great reason freezing is one of the best ways to save green beans is because frozen green beans will keep for a year no problem. Yes, they are still okay to eat after that but at that but at that point, their quality will begin to decline slowly.