Putting Up Vegetables, or If You Grow Them, You Must Put Them Up

This will likely be the longest post I will ever submit to you guys. I almost feel like offering a reward to
those who make their way to the end. Maybe a cheer will do. Good luck finishing this long one!

My parents grew huge gardens when I was a kid (many years back), The vegetables they grew pretty
much every year included pink eyed purple hull peas, bunch and pole butter beans, Contender green
beans, lady peas (my Dad’s #1 favorite vegetable), Texas cream peas (better yield than lady pea, but not
as good), speckled butterbeans (for my mom), peanuts (for my dad), sweet corn, tomatoes, several
different varieties of squash, cucumbers, okra, sweet potatoes (always) and red potatoes (sometimes),
and surely some I have forgotten. These were grown on a neighbor’s otherwise unused land on what
seemed like eternally long rows to a kid holding a weed chopping hoe.

The gardening beliefs of my parents (more is better) leads me to the words of an old country song, “If
you grow them, you’ve still got’ta pick and then put them up”.

To understand, you must be able to see my life as a kid from a kid’s perspective.

#1 – Until the day I was old enough to be totally responsible for myself, I was always younger than that.
#2 – I had no understanding of the cost of providing groceries for a family of six.
#3 – As a kid, my ambition in life was to run wild and free and not spend my carefree summer days with
a weed chopper’s hoe in my hand or a bean picker’s bushel basket at my feet, knowing harvest days
would be followed by hours of shelling peas and beans as Mr. Paladin or Matt Dillon and Miss Kitty
played on the TV.
#4 – I didn’t understand okra had to be cut daily or it would get tough.
#5 – It was always easy to not consider for even a moment that I would eventually eat the fruits of this
labor.

Here comes a future shock to a back then 12 year old kid – now, we (the wife and I) always keep a full
freezer of frozen vegetables in the garage and a nice stock of home canned stuff in our pantry. We know
how good home frozen or canned vegetables are and that we are happier knowing we have them
anytime we want to cook a veggie focused meal.
We do not have the space at our zero lot line retirement community house to grow all of the tasty
vegetables I mentioned at the beginning of my epistle, but almost all of them are available at your
friendly local farmers market or produce stand. My job is not to advertise for those folks but in my
opinion, as much as you can, you should support their efforts with your food dollars. The small family
farmer is a dying occupation in our country and the small family vegetable farmer an even rarer business
model. Pretty much everything I show you in this post was grown by a small family farmer. As Willie
Nelson would tell you between country music songs during his annual Farm Aid production, they are
great folks who grow stuff for us to eat. OK, that’s more than enough political stuff.

Let’s start with home canned green beans.

Most farmers markets, produce stands, local growers, and grocers sell fresh green beans and that’s
where we buy ours for canning these days. We took up my parents’ obsession with green bean canning
when they were no longer able. For years, they would grow, can and then portion out cases of mason
jarred canned beans among their four kids, as if a PhD chemist, a professional pharmaceutical scientist,
and two CPAs would be unable to otherwise feed themselves. I can still remember my mom telling us,
“We were only able to put up 4 dozen jars of beans for each of you”, like that monumental
accomplishment by a 68 year old was something she saw as a failure.

The process starts with nice fresh beans, working with whatever quantity you can handle and the
number of mason jars you own (about 7 dozen for us, some dating back to the 1960s). First, carefully
inspect the sealing area of each jar and discard any chipped edge jars since the seal will be questionable.
You need squeaky clean, sanitized jars, so run them through a sanitizing wash if you can. Our dish
washer has a long/long washing/sanitizing cycle and since we are retired with lots of free time that is
what we use. One thought. Not all glass jars will withstand pressure canning. That glass Mayo jar might
be fine for holding mayo, but it might shatter in the pressure canner or the seal may fail. Better to use
jars labeled for canning use when canning.
First step is to “Snip” away the stem and “Snoot” away the pointed end (my wife’s grandmother’s terms)
from the bean. You will need clean “snipped and snooted” beans, canning salt (has no added iodine),
Mason jars with fresh lids and water to can your beans.
You can hot water bath process your beans, but the food safety reliability of this method is really
questionable. I have a Master’s Degree in Microbiology with a APHA and ASQC certifications, so I am
going to claim “expert status” when I tell you to only trust pressure canning your beans. Botulism is a
deathly serious concern, along with being really PO’ed if your hot water bath canning fails to kill all of
the microorganisms and your beans rot in the jar over the next month or two. We have two pressure
cookers at our house that each hold 4 pint sized jars. We keep them out in the garage when it’s not
canning season. If we do not have enough bean filled jars to fill the cooker, we use empty jars filled with
water to finish a processing load, so the jars don’t bump around during the pressure canning process.
We like to can our beans as whole beans, standing them straight up (vertical pack) in the jar and we can
as many as possible that way. Mom always did them that way, and we do too. I always said Mom could
take home the blue ribbon for canned green beans at the state fair, for any jar of whole packed green
beans she ever put up. I am certain they taste the same as snapped or whole, but IMO, they are a lot
prettier on the shelf of the pantry when jarred as whole beans. Also, when the beans are small (pint size
length) beans they are more tender. Because of this, we try not to buy (or in the old days, grow)
long/big/tough beans. We always keep the bits and pieces we might trim away to get the beans to
length and any broken beans, canning these in separate jars from the whole beans. Ben Franklin, or
some other smart person said, “Waste not want not.”
You will use salt in the canning process if you can your beans our way, or leave it out to make low
sodium beans. If used, it should be Canning/Pickling Salt, which has no iodine and no flow controlling
additives. For our Jewish friends, "Circle P - Parve - Kosher Salt is fine for this recipe. When filling the
jars, leave 1/2 inch head space from the top of the beans and liquid. Leaving proper head space in the
jar above the beans is important, since an underfilled jar may have green bean tips (or whole bean
pieces if they are snapped) at the top that are not covered with water when canned, and jars that are
overfilled may expand to the point where the jar blows up in the cooker. Pack the beans as tightly as you
can when filling the jars. The beans will shrink a little during canning and you don’t want wasted space.
Each jar gets 1/2 teaspoon of Kosher or pickling salt and then is filled to 1/2 inch from the top with
boiling water.
Use two piece (domed) lids. The dome (the part of the two piece lid with the sealing gasket) lids are
heated in boiling water for a few minutes to soften the seal which helps assure proper sealing. Some will
say this is not necessary but I believe it helps. The dome lids are placed on the carefully cleaned (wipe
with clean towel after adding salt and water) jar rims.
The rings are then snuggly screwed in pace by hand and into the pressure cooker they go. Fill the cooker
1/2 to 2/3 full of water to assure it does not boil dry, or shoot boiling water out the top when it comes
to a boil and begins making steam. The lid goes on the cooker and the heat is turned on to bring the
cooker to a full boil. I like to leave the "shaker" off of the cooker until I see steam coming out the hole,
so that I know it is not blocked.
When steam starts coming out the port on top of the cooker, put the "shaker" fitting on the top and
wait for it to start "jiggling" Then I pressure cook the jars for 15 minutes. After the 15 minutes, you want
the cooker to cool slowly so remove it from the heat and let the pressure drop to zero slowly. If the
pressure is rapidly dropped to zero, there is a real risk of exploding the jar(s) in the cooker. I don’t take
off the shaker, until the pressure is pretty much at zero and the little metal pin in the rubber emergency
blow fitting falls down.
When the lid is removed after the pressure reaches zero, you will probably see/hear the dome lids begin
to "pop" down as the sealed gaskets allow a vacuum to form inside the jar. This is what you want to see
and hear, since that indicates you did a good job placing and sealing the lid. The still hot jars are then
carefully removed from the still hot water in the pressure cooker and placed on a pad or rack to
continue cooling.
Now you can do this and claim you are also an accomplished home green bean canner.

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Freezing Fresh Vegetables

In our freezer we have frozen sweet corn (cut off the cob for use when we make creamed corn or
vegetable soup), butter beans, pink eyed purple hull peas, Texas cream peas, a few bags of pinto beans,
and speckled butter beans, all blanched, portioned into two serving zip lock bags, frozen, and waiting to
be cooked.

Freezing fresh vegetables is something you can also do if you have freezer space.

About this time each year (March, April, May), we begin purchasing freezer grade, one pint size, zip lock
bags and continue until we have 6-8 boxes in the cabinet. Stores have them now but when folks begin
putting up vegetables as their gardens come in, one pint freezer bags will begin to sell out and finding
them at your grocer can become a hit or miss thing. Some of you are vacuum seal bag people and from
here to the end of this post, whenever I say zip lock bag, you can think vacuum seal bag, since they work
great for food storage in the freezer.

We also begin looking at our favorite produce stands and farmers markets this time of the year for the
types of peas, beans, and other vegetables I noted above. One thing that has happened over the last ten
years is that farmers markets and produce stands, at least in Mississippi and other places across the
south, have begun selling fresh shelled peas and beans in large plastic bags from their refrigerated food
displays.

When I use the term “large plastic bag”, I mean you probably have purchased a bushel quantity (18
pounds) of peas or beans - if you had purchased bean, shell, and all. My belief is your shelled bushel of
peas or beans will make close to 40, two serving frozen packages. If you are an accountant or math
teacher you should be able to use those numbers and the price your vegetable outlet charges to
determine if home freezing is a worthwhile thing for you, versus buying grocery store frozen product.
My opinion is the analysis should be a cost/benefit calculation with heavy weight given to how good
home processed vegetables are and the satisfaction of doing it yourself.

If you eat the pea or bean you freeze once a week, that large bag you bought or the bushel you grew
provides enough for 10 months, more or less. We have found the way we blanch and freeze our
vegetables (covered in the blanching liquid) gives them over two years’ freezer storage capability with
no loss in quality. Anyhow, this is how we do it. I’ll cover peas and beans first and then give a little more
information on sweet corn cut off the cob for use as creamed corn or in soups, chowders or whatever.

You will need to blanch the fresh vegetables and bag them before you freeze them. Blanching requires
you to bring the pea or bean up to boiling temperature (in water) and hold them there until they have
cooled. Blanching changes to structure of the carbohydrates and proteins in the vegetable to help delay
the degradation over time as long as the package is held in a frozen state. This treatment does not
necessarily kill all of the bacteria, especially spore forming organisms, but freezing either kills them or
keeps them from multiplying. The things of concern during freezer storage are avoiding freezer burn,
frost accumulation, dehydration, and any conditions that involve multiple thawing and refreezing
situations.

The folks who sell loosely packed frozen vegetables in the grocery (Birds Eye and other brands)
accomplish these things a bit differently, so please don’t take these instructions to indicate what
commercial frozen vegetable processors do. What I will assure you is this is a method you can do in your
home without a million dollar steam processing line feeding a custom packaging line and minus 40
degree flash freezer.

We always buy no more shelled peas or beans than we can put up that same day. You could store them
overnight in your refrigerator, but my advice is to not do that. Chances are, unless you watch your butter
beans pass through the sheller and into the plastic bag, they may have been stored for hours or days in
the stand’s refrigerator. Regardless, they will be better the sooner you blanch and freeze them.

Shelled peas and beans from the produce stand or farmers market will not be clean when you buy them.
They will have bits of leaves, twigs, an occasional beetle or dirt clod. In other words, they will need to be
washed as the first step. We do that in the kitchen sink, with the strainer in place, or a large pan, and
continue washing and picking out trash until satisfied our beans are clean.

Pink eyed purple hull peas

Texas cream peas

Butter beans
When the beans/peas are removed from the washing water, they are placed into a large stove top pan,
covered with water (4 parts beans to 1 part water), and brought to a boil on the stove top.

Texas cream peas

Pink eyed purple hull peas

As the water temperature approaches boiling, foam will begin to accumulate on the surface. The trash
you missed will be captured in the foam and should be skimmed away.

Texas cream peas

Pink eyed purple hull peas

Eventually the water and bean mixture will come to a low boil. The beans or peas will change color as
this happens and the broth will take on color. This is normal. After the beans or peas boil have come to a
low boil, turn the heat off and allow the contents to cool to a temperature that allows handling and
bagging. We have used a fan to speed this cooling, and that works well.

Texas Cream Peas

 Pinto beans

The broth you see in these photos is your friend. It will be bagged with the peas or beans, covering them
to assure they do not dry out, frost over, or freezer burn. It will assure the vegetables are protected
during frozen storage. It is also full of pea or bean flavor, minerals, good flavor, etc. that stays with the
pea or bean as it cooks. You will need to make certain you have enough liquid when you blanch to
assure all bagged peas or beans have enough water to cover all of the bagged units. Having 1 part water
to 2 parts peas or beans is usually plenty.

Now it’s time to portion out your vegetables for freezing. Caution – they need to be cool enough to
comfortably handle and not melt or heat degrade the zip lock bag. You will do this, by adding a
measured portion to the zip lock bag, cover it with liquid force out as much air as possible then seal and
stack the bags for freezing.

Texas cream peas

Texas cream peas

Pink eyed purple hull peas

Bagged Texas cream peas

Bagged Texas cream peas, ready for freezer

Bagged pink eyed purple hull peas

As I said earlier, many of you have vacuum sealers with freezer grade bag material. If you do, you
probably are already an accomplished bagger and can easily substitute your vacuum bagger for the zip
lock bags.

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Corn for Roasting Ears:

We always use grocery corn for roasting corn on the cob. It is available throughout the year – spring,
summer, winter. It is relatively cheap, easy to roast and tasty. I see no real reason to attempt to freeze
it, so we don’t. Please don’t hate me, but we never boil corn on the cob. From the first time I had
roasted corn on the cob, I stopped boiling it and only roast my corn on the cob.

Sweet Corn, cut from the cob and frozen for use as creamed corn or in soups:

Frozen corn, cut from the cob makes excellent creamed corn.
We keep a lot of sweet corn, cut from the cob, blanched and frozen, for making creamed corn and for
use in vegetable soup.

Here is a mess of corn I picked up from a small family farmer I know in Rayville, LA. As you can see, it
was pretty corn. Like most old guys, I can remember when almost all cobs of corn included a worm that
had to be removed and then trimmed to remove the damage he did. You really don’t see much worm
damaged corn anymore. I don’t know if the elimination was due to genetic development or effective
pesticide use.
These ears had been shucked and most of the silks removed.

I have a sharp stiff bladed knife I use to cut the kernels from the cob. It works well, especially if it is as
sharp as I can get it. To cut the kernels away, the blade is placed horizontally against the kernels and
then down the length of the cob. I position the cob over a pan to catch the kernels as they are shaved
away.
It takes very little time to finish once you start. Actually shucking and silk removal was the most difficult
part.
The corn is transferred to a suitable pan for blanching on the stove top. Adequate water is added then
the contents are brought to a low boil. This next photo is from another (larger) bunch of ears I
processed.

WARNING: Corn will scorch! Stir as it heats to a boil and watch. If it scorches, there is no way to save it.
After bringing to a low boil, turn the heat off and allow the corn to cool to a temperature you (and your
plastic bags) can handle. Then portion the corn and water into zip lock freezer bags just as with the peas
and beans directions. I am always tempted to add more than two servings to the zip lock bag because I
love this creamed corn vegetable. We have friends who always ask, “Are we having some of your
creamed corn?” when we invite then to a country dinner. In those situations, we cook two or three, or
four 2 portion bags so we have plenty.

Bag the cut corn and freeze

Bonus – Cooking the creamed corn:

To cook the creamed corn add the corn, a little water, a tablespoon of butter, and a half teaspoon of salt
to a non-stick skillet.
Bring to a simmer and reduce water. The corn cooks quickly. Sometimes, I’ll taste, then add a little more
water and cook a little longer. Honestly, it varies batch to batch depending on the phase of the moon or
something else.
Continue cooking until it is fairly dry.
Stir.
Then mix 1 - 1 1/2 Tablespoons of AP flour with 4-6 Tablespoons of milk and add to corn. More flour
makes thicker corn. More milk makes creamier corn. Add a little grind of black pepper then cook under
low heat until the corn thickens to creamy goodness.
Did you make it to the end?

God bless you!