Drying Green Beans

Earlier this week I posted about buying 20 lb of organic green beans from the organic farm.  I ended up with 7 L jars and 24 - 500 ml jars of home canned green beans.  I am testing the Tattler reusable canning lids so 11 of the jars canned were Tattler lids while the rest were the regular, single-use, metal Bernardin canning lids.  Of those jars one of the Tattler lids failed but I think I figured out the cause.

About 19 lbs of the green beans were canned.  I reserved about 1½ lb of the green beans for drying.  Green beans are best dried when young and tender.  As with all produce choose organically grown if at all possible.

Method:  Wash and clean the ends from the beans.  Cut into 1" pieces.  Steam blaanch for 4 to 6 minutes.  Arrange on a drying tray in a single layer.  Place the drying tray over a sided baking sheet to catch any pieces that fall through the drying rack as they dry.  Dry at 125ºF until beans are brittle.  The dried beans can be used ins soups, stews and casseroles.

The green beans took overnight to dry.  Once dried I packaged into a 500 ml mason jar then vacuum sealed.  Vacuum sealing is one of the best ways to ensure dried foods are protected from humidity, rodents and insects.  This provided another good opportunity to test one of the Tattler reusable lids.  According to the package these lids can be used for vacuum sealing as well.  The Tattler lid performed without a hitch when vacuum sealed.  I removed it then replaced with a used metal lid because I have a lot of used lids but only a few Tattler lids to work with.

It will be quite some time before I will need to use Tattler lids for vacuum sealing but it is nice to know that they do seal as promised.  I use canning lids that were previously used for canning for vacuum sealing.  Once they get to a point I can no longer get a seal the lids go into the recycle bin.  It will be quite some time before I run out of used metal canning lids to use for vacuum sealing even with gradually switching to the Tattler reusable canning lids providing I am happy with the results over the testing period.