Canning Green Beans

Have you ever canned green beans before? It is really easy to do. It's probably my favorite thing to can because my kids can help me without making a huge mess. Some people shy away from canning green beans because they require a pressure cooker to process them. This can be expensive. If canning beans is something you're only going to do once, it will probably not be worth the expense. Check with friends and family and see if you can borrow one. I lucked out an inherited my husband's grandma's pressure cooker.

I'll walk you through the process.

1 - Wash your beans - I usually fill a clean sink with water and let them soak for a few minutes.

2 - Get your jars ready by washing them. You should probably do this first, but I'm not going to go and edit my collage - sorry;)

3 - Fill the jars with just a little bit of water, then add 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

4 - Cut up your beans. Cut off the ends then cut into small pieces. My kids had a blast cutting them up. {Some of the pieces were a little small, but they had fun and were a HUGE help}

5 - If you have little ones who shouldn't play with knives they can still help. I cut off the ends and then handed them to my 2 year old. She would bend them in half and...

6 - SNAP they would break.

7 - Once you've filled the jars with beans, fill them up to within a 1/2 of the top with water.

8 - Process in a pressure cooker according to the recipe. {Make sure you read the instructions to your pressure cooker to learn how to use it.}

That's it!

I couldn't believe how fast my kids got these ready. I helped get the jars ready and got them beans to work on and chopped off ends so the 2 year old could snap hers.  Between doing that I only did about 2 jars. My kids did 20!
We were all done with the kitchen cleaned up in about an hour. {Not counting the time to pressure cook them}