Fermenting Green Snap Beans

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This is helpful information Alasgun. Thank you for your guidance.

 

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I got brave and tried putting up a jar of cherry tomatoes with basil to ferment. It sounds like they can get quite fizzy too, turning in to little fermented flavour bombs.

At the two week mark the chilled fermented cherry tomatoes with garlic and basil are becoming a personal favourite. I may just put another batch on tomorrow, because I LOVE them. They are very refreshing and so very pretty to look at. By the way, the recipe I used said that it is important to use firm cherry tomatoes for fermenting, since they soften up in the brine. I used a 5% salt brine, with 12g of sea salt for each cup of water-- and it is just right for my taste. The white that you see floating over the tomatoes is a piece of plastic that I cut from the bottom of a yogurt container, to keep them submerged.

And remember the squishy bent cucumber ferment? My husband ate them all, so they must have been good too.

 

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Carrot harvest day (mostly because I will be needing that space to plant other vegetables), so I decided to try fermenting some of the carrots with garlic. I didn't even use a weight in the jar, because unlike other vegetables like beans and cucumbers the carrots all sank to the bottom. Fingers crossed that they turn out tasty.

 

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Something nibbled two of my pickling cucumbers just a little tiny bit. I cut that part off, and then added them to my ferment. Was this risky? I hate to waste homegrown produce, but I also do not want to contaminate the batch.

 

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Just checked on the fermenting carrots, and noted that the brine has become quite viscous. I looked it up, and this is something that can happen when fermenting sweet vegetables-- and were these carrots ever sweet, so that seems reasonable. There are also foamy bubbles on the surface of the brine.

 

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Once again the Ball brand fermenting springs are squishing the heck out of my pickling cucumbers.

And my purple Trionfo Violetto snap beans have turned green after just a few days of fermenting.

 

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...and after five days a bit of mold has formed on the surface of the cucumber ferment, despite using the stainless steel spring to keep them submerged. I skimmed off the mold, and moved this ferment to the fridge. Next time |I may try securing the pickling spices in a tea bag, so they remain 100% submerged. Even something as small as a coriander seed seems rather prone to molding if it makes its way to the surface of the brine.

 

[Suzee]

We are looking to preserve some of the vegetables that we grow in our garden, and one of our goals for the summer is to master the art of fermenting green beans. Have you done this before, and do you have a recipe that you follow? Does fermenting work better with a larger volume of ferment-- or will small batches give comparable results? Finding a good balance of salt in the brine seems to be very important, and the temperature of the ferment seems to play an important role too. I am planning on using sea salt to ferment fresh snap beans in glass jars. I have one tall glass Weck jar, and also pint or quart jars fitted with silicone fermenting caps and 'pickle pebble' glass weights.

I haven’t done green beans yet - sounds great!- but have done some other things. You can make pickles by lactof-ermentation, here’s a site that has good explanation of the process.
https://www.thespruceeats.com/how-lacto-fermentation-works-1327598
I have done pico-starter which is like a pickle “relish” that I add to salsa or just use with Mexican dishes. Sauerkraut and sriracha are also in my go tos. Fermentation is great and so good for you, but if you don’t have a root cellar it’s tricky to keep long term. Sometimes fermented products like pickles and relish wil go soft if not kept cool enough. You can process them, but then you destroy the probiotic benefits. This is a topic I would really like to know more about!

 

[Suzee]

Once again the Ball brand fermenting springs are squishing the heck out of my pickling cucumbers.

And my purple Trionfo Violetto snap beans have turned green after just a few days of fermenting.

Love the beans! Would love your recipe!

 

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Love the beans! Would love your recipe!

My fermenting has not been very scientific, and I have not followed any recipes specifically. Mostly I have been using the online brine calculator to estimate how much sea salt to add to the water, and this varies depending on which vegetable your are fermenting. I do place a sticker on each vessel to indicate how much salt I used, and with the yellow snap bean ferment it was 13g of sea salt dissolved in 2 cups of water (13g being about 2 tablespoons give or take, depending on the size of the salt crystals). We grow a LOT of garlic, so I often add a few cloves to each jar. I think you can add almost any herb for flavour; dill and beans seem to compliment each other.