A friend called me this morning to ask if I had any ideas regarding a canning problem she's having. She and I have both canned dried beans for years but lately she's been having an unusually high number of seals fail. She said that when she opened the jars, the beans have been moldy. The jars have no imperfections to interfere with the seal and the lids are randomly selected new boxes. She's doing plenty of canning right now but her other products don't have the same failure rate.

The only thing I could think of was perhaps some of the cooking liquid carried starch molecules that continued to swell during the processing time and weakened the seal. Since the beans are only presoaked and heated to boiling before bottling, it seemed to make sense.

Anyway, I told her I would ask the best source of practical knowledge I knew and pass your input to her. Thanks in advance.

-- marilyn (rainbow@ktis.net), September 21, 2000

Answers

This was my first year to can dried beans. I boiled them for 30 minutes, after soaking them all night, before canning them. Don't know if that makes that much difference.

-- Cindy (atilrthehony_1@yahoo.com), September 21, 2000.

Why would you can dried beans??? Seems like a lot of work .... never heard of doing that which is why I ask.

-- kelly (kellytree@hotmail.com), September 22, 2000.

Kelly, Convenience is why I canned them. My husband loves beans and will eat them with a sandwich for a quick meal just about any time.

-- Cindy (atilrthehony_1@yahoo.com), September 22, 2000.

Hi Kelly. I can beans for the convenience too. It's just my husband and me and I never saw a reason to cook a small quantity of beans. For the time you need to cook them, you can have a canner's worth, in my case, 7 qts, for 7 different meals. We don't like them reheated repeatedly or frozen because of the mushiness plus that takes freezer space. It's easy to make a quick meal by mixing beans with a grain for complete protein, adding them to canned ground meat, tomatoes and some seasonings for chili or whatever. It's really simple and easy-- if your jars stay sealed which was my friend's problem and the reason for this question.

-- marilyn (rainbow@ktis.net), September 22, 2000.

I also can beans and make lots of cool bean soups to use in a snap! If anyone doesn't have this book Country Bean you can get it on the internet www.naturalmeals.com or sales@naturalmeals.com....I got mine through Hoegers. Here is their recipe for canning and the one I use now because of the consistency. Perhaps this will be so long it will clog up all the other hatefull threads going on!!! :)

Wash, sort beans or peas, bring to a boil for 2 minutes or soak overnight. Let sit 1 hour if you boiled them drain and rinse. After preparing beans using one of the above methods, add hot water to cover and boil 30 minutes. Pack hot into hot jars, leaving 1 inch head space. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt to each pint or 1 teaspoon salt to each quart. (This is the book that turned me on to vegetable soup base, and I use it now when I can beans, about 1 teaspoon. It makes the best gravies and perks up any soup or stew or chicken and dumplings that is alittle bit blah!

Cover with cooking water, leaving 1 inch head space. Remove air bubbles, adjust caps. Process pints 1 hour and 15 minutes, quarts 1 hour and 30 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure.

They then have a section devoted to these canned beans for hurry up great recipes, sections in the book also include Breakfasts, quick breads, dressings salads dips gravies (excellent) seasonings loaves patties casseroles side dishes dinners snacks cookies bars puddings pies cakes tofu instant mashed beans (that you can make instant refried beans with that are great for burrittos or for making the gravy) That I proved to my sister that I can make these refried beans faster than she can open a can and heat it, plus they are so much better!

Now....before you say I am not doing any of this.... my family is just the typical would rather have pizza type of family, and they love this! 196 pages jammed pack full and you could quite literally live on beans (which is the point of this book :) 14.95$ One of my Y2K purchases that I use all the time! Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), September 22, 2000.

I am thinking of canning the beans from the green beans that I just let go in my garden. Would I do those the same way? My grampa used to call them horticulture beans, although I know you can buy "real" horticulture beans.

-- Terri Miller (tchr4hm@juno.com), September 23, 2000.

Terri, there are two kinds or stages of "dry" beans. The first is shelly beans. Those are the big seeds you'd get if you stripped the pods from big knobby green string beans. The bean seeds can be indented with your finger nail. Those you can just boil up in about the same length of time you'd cook snapped green beans. Longer for older/drier shelly beans. In fact, we'll sometimes make a mixed pan of snapped green beans and the shelly bean seeds. I don't know how bean seeds at this stage would react to the canning process. They might swell overly much, or disinegrate during the canning.

After the shelly beans are dried-and this takes a bit of time even after you can't indent them with your finger nail, then you've got plain old dry beans and they could be canned as above. Gerbil

-- Gerbil (ima_gerbil@hotmail.com), September 23, 2000.