Fermented green beans

Learn how to preserve green beans using the time old tradition of fermentation. Fermented green beans are easy to make and good for your gut.

Fermentation is an old method of preserving food. It doesn’t require a hot water bath or pressure canner, and takes less time. If this is your first introduction to fermented foods, hello, and welcome to a whole new world of health!

Fermented vegetables take raw vegetables up another notch. The bacteria that naturally rest on the skin of vegetables is turned into lactic acid. This lactic acid is a natural preservative. Cultures for Health has an excellent article on the science behind lacto-fermentation.

If you have not added fermented foods to your diet, you should! It was a staple in people’s diets long ago before the convenience foods came on the scene, and for good reason. Fermented foods increase your gut health. And who doesn’t want a healthy gut?

But, on a practical level, fermenting vegetables is easy. When the harvest is coming in at top speed, I don’t always have time to can all day and all night just to preserve everything…enter fermentation. I can literally throw my vegetables in a glass jar with salt and water, plop a lid on, and call it a day. It takes me no time AND ups the nutritional value. How’s that for a deal? Easier and Healthier.

Ingredients for Fermented green beans

green beans (shocker)

Sea salt (I use Himalayan pink salt)

Filtered water (or well water)

How to make Fermented green beans

First, you will need a clean glass jar. It doesn’t need to be a mason jar because we aren’t going to use heat. I do recommend using a plastic lid. I have tried metal lids in the past. Very, very bad idea! My husband had to tap into his inner hulk just to get the lids off because they had rusted. I use these lids, they fit mason jars, as well as a lot of other jars.

You will want to use freshly picked green beans. Why? Because the nutritional value, as well as the beneficial bacterial count, decrease with time. Fresh is best!

Also, do not wash the green beans. The good bacteria is resting on the surface of the green beans and this is what will get the fermentation process going.

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Now, take the glass jar and the green beans and begin putting the green beans inside of the jar so they stand up. Once the jar is full, it is time to add the salt. The ratio is 3 tablespoons of salt per quart (2 tablespoons of salt if you are fermenting at 85 degrees or below).

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Once the salt is added, pour the water over the green beans to cover. Leave at least 1″ of headspace. You may want to add a fermentation weight. Cultures for Health has an entire kit dedicated to fermenting, which includes weights for your jars. You can also use a rock to keep the green beans from floating. The goal is to have all the green beans submerged under the water.

Now, screw on the lid and leave to ferment at room temperature for 3-4 weeks. Some fermentation recipes will tell you to “burp” the jar once a day. This simply involves unscrewing and then screwing the lid back on quickly to release any pressure building in the jar. I have found that when I use the plastic lids I mentioned above, I do not need to burp the jar. If you see bubbles building up, just do a quick release and tighten the lid again.

Once the jar is finished fermenting, transfer to storage.

How to store Fermented vegetables

There is an array of answers here. Storing fermented vegetables in the fridge, at a temperature of around 35 degrees, will bring the fermentation to a halt. However, if you are fermenting a large amount of jars, it may not be practical to store the ferments in the fridge once the 3-4 weeks of fermenting as finished. In this case, you have options!

Perhaps you have a cool room or other cool storage space that ranges from 45-60 degrees. This will significantly slow down the fermentation process, but it will still ferment. Which is perfectly fine!

Maybe your like me and the coolest place you have is around 70-75 degrees. Guess what? You can still ferment! We have a large shelving unit in our basement and during the summer it registers about 71 degrees. In this case, I prepare the vegetables in the jar, screw on the lid and take it down to the basement. Here, it will do a slow ferment until I am ready to open the jar in the winter.

This method has worked great for me. The vegetables turn out delicious!

So, whether you have an extra refrigerator or a 75 degree basement, you got options!

What to do with the leftover Fermented liquid

Okay, you have eaten the entire jar of fermented green beans, and you have all this liquid left in the jar. What do you do with it? Well, first, don’t throw it away! The same gut healthy nutrition in the green beans, is in the juice.

Winter time is typically when our immune systems can use a little boost. This juice is just the boost you need. Depending on how much juice I have, we (all 8 of us) each take a small shot of fermented juice at breakfast each day. This keeps our bodies running in tip-top shape.

One of my go to recipes in the winter is my Best Instant Pot Chili recipe. I soak the beans ahead of time in water with a dash of apple cider vinegar, but if I haven’t eaten beans in a while, it can still do unstable things to my stomach. You know what I mean?

Many times I took a shot of fermented juice before eating the chili and it worked wonders! My body had no problem digesting the beans.

Any time someone in our family complains of tummy troubles, I immediately grab the juice out of the fridge and pour a couple teaspoons in a cup. It takes care of those tummy troubles in no time.

Troubleshooting

Don’t freak out, but sometimes there will be a bit of mold on top when you go to open your jar of fermented green beans.

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I love what Shannon Stonger says in her book Traditionally Fermented Foods, “Before you panic at the sight of something in the white, fuzzy or funky department, remember this: Yeasts and molds are everywhere. We inoculate cheese with some of the funkiest-looking stuff around, making it utterly delicious. Some of the tastiest sausages are covered in what we might call a white mold.”

So how do you know if it is a good mold or bad mold?

If you see a white film on top of your green beans, don’t worry, the heat tends to bring this on. This has happened to several jars of my fermented vegetables. Just scrape it off the top and move on.

Shannon Stonger gives a great checklist for when to be concerned with mold:

• Smell it. If it smells rotten and disgusting throw it out.
• Check the color of the surface yeast. If it is white and smells fine, then it is probably fine. Is there any green, pink, yellow or blue? Toss it.
• Taste it. If it smells strongly of tang or yeast, but doesn’t smell rotten, and has no crazy colors, then it should be fine to taste. If the taste is too strong, then add it to the compost pile.

Resources

• I can not recommend Shannon Stonger’s book Traditionally Fermented Foods enough. Not only does she have recipes, but she goes in depth into just about everything you could want to know about fermented foods. It is a staple in my kitchen.
• Cultures for Health is another excellent source of information, recipes, and products to help you get started. These guys have everything you need to feel comfortable in fermentation.
• I bought the book Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning a couple of years ago. This book was my first introduction into traditional preserving methods, including fermenting. A must read.