I filled a five quart stock pot about 3/4 full and put it on a burner on high. Elizabeth snapped the ends off then passed them to me to chop them into smaller peices, about one inch long. I then washed them in a normal collander, picking out any pieces that had rough spots or bug bites. About the time we had everything chopped, the water had started to boil.
Now came the fun part, beans need to be blanched to stop the enzyme action that will ruin them, even in the freezer. Blanching time is important- too little accelerates the enzymes, while too much makes the beans tough. Exactly three minutes produces the best frozen beans. I dropped all the cut bean peices in at once and blanched them for 3 minutes and 30 seconds. The extra thirty seconds was to allow the water to return to a boil. As soon as the threee minutes was up, I poured the beans back into the collander that they were rinsed in and ran cold water into the pot they came out of. I added a little ice and dumped the beans back in to cool. A good rule of time is to cool the vegetables for the same time that they were blanched, so in our case, 3 minutes. While we waited we marked the freezer bags with the type of vegetable and the date they were frozen. Then the only thing left to do is to put a couple handfuls into each bag, squeeze out most of the air and pop in the freezer. I've read that one handful is two servings but my serving size is usually two handfuls.
This task was easy enough to do several more times this year without too much stress and produces lots of beans with only a little work. Feel free to comment and point out any errors that I made or ideas that you have. Links will be added on the right hand side of the home page. Each has great info and easy links to instructions for freezing other vegetables.
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