Green Beans Are The Veggie You Didn't Know You Should Be Pickling

Green beans are a great addition to Thanksgiving casseroles, Nicoise salad, and a pot of creamy, spicy curry, but they're also an unexpectedly delicious pickled veggie. As an age-old preservation practice, pickling is a task that even the most inexperienced cook can execute. Plus, it's a way to extend green beans' shelf-life and imbue them with novel flavors and textures.

If you've never pickled vegetables, you'll be pleasantly surprised at how effortless and self-contained the process is. Pickled green beans is a one-jar recipe in which you place trimmed and prepped raw green beans into a mason jar or other sealable jar along with any desired seasoning, pour the pickling liquid over it, let it cool, and stick it in the fridge for a few days. The pickling liquid is a mixture of salt, water, and vinegar boiled for five minutes to bring out their flavors and catalyze the pickling process.

The hot brine will slightly cook the green beans and bloom the flavors of the pickling spices, instilling mild, vegetal green beans with tart, spicy, and herbal notes. Like most pickled vegetables, pickled green beans will have a refreshingly juicy crunch that you can enjoy straight out of the jar.

Pickling green beans is convenient in more ways than one; not only does it require no real cooking method, but you don't even need to break down the spices, aromatics, or herbs you use. Furthermore, you have free range to use any whole spice you think will taste good with green beans.

This pickled green bean recipe from Tasting Table food creator Miriam Hahn uses a simple pickling spice mixture of peppercorns, garlic cloves, mustard seeds, and fresh dill. If you want to increase the spiciness, you can add red pepper flakes, allspice berries, and ground ginger. Meanwhile, coriander and bay leaves bring savory flavors to the mix. If you want sweet and spicy pickled green beans, you can add whole red chili peppers, garlic, mustard seed, and a dash of maple syrup to your mason jar.

Pickled green beans make a healthy, crunchy, and flavorful snack to eat right out of the jar, but they'd make the perfect accompaniment to a cheese plate or charcuterie board. You can use them as a crunchy, tart element in salads. You can serve them with an assortment of pickled vegetables like carrots, okra, and beets as a pickled crudite board accompanied by creamy ranch or blue cheese dressing. Another more elaborate appetizer option is to bread pickled green beans in tempura or buttermilk batter and deep fry them for any even crunchier deep-fried pickle option.