[burch]

A friend gave me some pole beans to cook up. I`m wanting to save some for planting. Now for the stupid question. Are these beans accually seeds and if so how do I process `em for storing and future planting ? Also after you harvest beans what is the process for getting them ready to cook ?

Burch

[Cross Hair]

I would ask your friend if he would let a few bean pods go full term on the plant as they will be a more viable bean for saving to plant. Most of the beans picked for eating are picked early in the bean (seeds) life as they are softer and more digestable + more palattable.

What variety are they? the pole beans I grew in the past, you just cooked up as green beans and ate whole thing except the ends ya' snap off.

[cjleete]

I like to put'em in a skillet with sliced yellow squash and olive oil and minced garlic and just enough water to steam them a bit with the cover on.

[Metronome]

Normally we would just let the beans mature, then dry on the vines, they fall right out of the pod. I would guess since your beans were for eating, they weren't quite mature so I don't know how well they will replant if you dried them out.

Standard procedure (in my kitchen) for most beans is just a quick blanch (but I prefer them crunchy), or just steam them until desired softness. If you use the blanching method, they work very well in caseroles in place of those horrid excuse for vegetables, canned beans

[burch]

Well I got two nice bags of `em. The first bag we cooked in the crock pot. They came out a bit mushy but i`ll have to say they tasted great. I`m gonna use the steam method on my next bag. I`m also getting two bags of butter beans and i`m already drooling over that but i`ll have to wait until next weekend to get `em. Thanks for blanch method, that`s how we did `em.