Recommending Dried Beans

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 136, 30 January 1942, Page 23

Recommending Dried Beans

Dear Aunt Daisy, We shall soon be getting ready to preserve vegetables; and here is my experience with beans. I have tried them preserved in salt, also bottled, just as you bottle fruit; except that you top and tail the beans and cut them as though you were going to cook them for dinner. But the best way of all, I find, to save jars, time and trouble, is to DRY them! I gather my beans while tender, cut off the ends, cut them very, finely just as if ready for cooking; then spread out the sliced bedns on flat trays. You can dry them either in the hot sun, or on the rack over the fire, but don’t dry them in the oven! It takes three days to dry them sufficiently. Keep turning the beans while drying. When thoroughly dry, put them in paper bags, tie up with string to keep out the dirt, moths and flies, and hang the bags up in a dry place, When wanted for use, just take out a small handful of beans, place them in a bowl of clean water for 24 hours, and wash next morning. Put them in clean cold water, with a small pinch of bicarbonate of soda-or without soda if preferred (this is better without soda)and boil for 15 to 20 minutes, They will be found to be as good as fresh beans. I have had dried beans for 30 years at least, and have always found them thoroughly reliable, and an excellent addition to a dinner for the. winter months. Drying Fruit-I have also dried plums- by having good sound fruit, placed on trays, and dried on the rack over the fire. They are like a prune when properly dried and are very good, For damsons, I like them preserved in salicylic acid. One teaspoonful of the acid to two quarts of water, brought to the boil, then left to get quite cold. Have ready good, clean, sound fruit

packed in jars, and pour the cold liquid over, and cover either with lids or paper, as they keep without being airtight. I use the big jars, and just take out as many as I want to use, and cover up the remainder for another time. I have preserved damsons this way for many years, and have never known them to go wrong,

Grandma

(Huntly).