Leather Britches? other drying beans

[garnetmoth]

Hello all,

I got some Barnes Mt. Cornfield beans, and have read that they make good leather britches- strung green beans that soaked overnight make tasty eating.

Thinking along the lines of Atash and prepping, it would be nice to have a lower input storage than canning.

Has anyone made leather britches? are they worth it compared to dry shelly beans? How would you save beans for eating if push came to shove?

[plantsnobin]

OK, I just typed out a long statement on the whole 'prepping' for the 'shit to hit the fan' idea, but erased it all because I knew I would offend many. So, I'll just stick to food storage. I don't really know the answer to your specific question, but I would suggest a book for you. Root Cellaring by Mike and Nancy Bubel from Storey Publishing. Doesn't deal with green beans, but lots of other things you can cheaply store. If we are honest with ourselves, canning is pretty expensive. Around here, lids cost about 50 cents each. I can buy a can of green beans for less.

[garnetmoth]

aww- Id have liked to read it!
We got lots of canning jars for our wedding, so we havent come up against price yet. I still think pressure canning would be useful for meat but who knows if energy prices go crazy, we will just eat more rabbit!

Ill check out that book, thanks

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I dislike leather britches... About the only way I could enjoy them is if they were crushed up somewhat finely and added to a soup: preferably with lots of tomato to hide the taste. I think I'd prefer them french cut. I think I would also prefer them if they were cooked before dehydrating. I bet the quality would be much better that way and the taste I object to would probably be absent.

Nov 4, 2010 10:22:27 GMT -5 @plantsnobin said:

Around here, lids cost about 50 cents each. I can buy a can of green beans for less.

Wow! Around here flats for regular mouthed jars run around $0.12 each. But then I live in Canningville, usa so there might be some competitive pricing between the stores.

As far as rings go, I only have to have enough rings for whatever I bottle in one day. Before storing any canned bottle we always remove the rings.

Regular mouthed flats are less expensive than wide mouthed. I always can in regular mouthed bottles except for peach halves.

Every time I can I generally say something like. "You know it might be less expensive to buy this at the store, especially if our labor is worth anything."

The thing is, when I bottle my own food I know that it doesn't have any additives that have been presumed safe. And I know that I haven't sprayed it with pesticides. And I know how much sugar and salt I have added. I know the ingredients were fresh.

[plantsnobin]

Whoops, I mistyped. Sorry about that, the average cost for lids is about 25 cents, and you really don't need too many rings indeed. But the point is, you need external inputs for canning. Eating in season, or eating items that can be stored in a root cellar, or even kept in the ground until consumption, is the way to go if you are going for self sufficiency.

[wildseed57]

I've not tried leather britches, which sound intriguing, I do dry, freeze, can, pickle, ferment, and even lard and brined or crock which falls in line for fermenting. I can't see wasting what I grow or raise. A lot of this comes from what I learned from my Dad and mom that went through the great depression. I like using the large mouth jars, but find that you need to pressure treat them a bit different to get them to last as long as the small mouth jars. Green Beans is one thing i always have plenty of during the season so I try and can and store away as much as possible I've not tried drying them fist and cooking them later. When I tried freezing them they turn into pieces of rubber so I don't try that any more. I do use a lot of dried shelling beans for soups and just plain old cooked beans. Right now I have a large bag of dried soy beans that got away from me during the hot spell we had I'd like to see what i can do with them. maybe try making soy flour or bean curd? Well I don't want to change the post nor hijack it.
George W.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

With green beans I typically eat or bottle what I want and then I allow the rest to mature into dry beans which I shell out and use just like any other dry bean. As far as I can tell most of the nutrition in a bean is in the seed anyway, and not in the pod.

I grew up essentially as a sustenance farmer. If we didn't hunt it or grow it we didn't eat it. Root cellaring, or storing things like onions, winter squash, beans, and grains, in a dry room are certainly the easiest ways to preserve food for later use. Dehydrating is somewhat more time consuming and somewhat more on-grid, especially if you use a fan or electrically heated dehydrator. Root cellaring is a great way to store vegetables for six months. If longer storage is desired then other methods such as bottling or dehydrating need to be used. In any case, it is hard to store food long term without some kind of input from society: I need buckets, or bottles, or mylar bags, or sheet-rock, etc...

For a hundred bucks I can store enough canning lids to last my family for 5 years. By the time they run out I would have other means available for storing food, or the crisis would be over, or they would be a very valuable barter item, or they would be a great hedge against inflation.

Giggles: And of course I can only be self sufficient if I save my own seeds. What am I going to store them in? An envelope made out of a piece of paper that someone outside me family manufactured for me?

[mnjrutherford]

At the moment, we are allowing our field peas to dry on the bush. We had some rain last night, but the plants are still green so we aren't pulling them just yet.

Leather britches huh? Never heard that term before. Are they cooked after soaking?

[deanriowa]

Here is a good description of Leather Britches: www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/1970-11-01/More-On-Leather-Britches.aspxs.

I was planning on trying tsome this season, but terrible year for snap beans for me personally.

Daen

[mnjrutherford]

Interesting article Den! Thanks for passing that along.

[Walk]

I made Leather Britches back in the 70's, threading them whole and hanging in an attic - they were awful!!! Fortunately, that experiment didn't turn me off to dried foods entirely. I now dehydrate lots of green beans, but the secret to making them taste good and not like eating leather is to lightly steam blanch before drying. This will halt the enzymes that make the bean pod convert it's sweet taste to it's mature, starchy seed storage package. First you cut the beans into thin crosswise slices or frenched lengthwise. Then steam blanch until the color changes from raw to lightly cooked, stirring during steaming if necessary to distribute the steam evenly. I do all of our drying with solar power (dryer of my design) as described on my website, geopathfinder.com, on the food preservation page. When reconstituted, dried green beans taste somewhat like canned except with better texture. They can be used in beans salad, soups, or reconstituted with dried sweet corn to make succotash. If the weather's not conducive to solar drying, I'll make a batch of dilly bean pickles to make use of excess harvest.

[garnetmoth]

Sounds great everyone, thanks! Ill plan to grow dry beans, and eat them that way. It sounded interesting.

Larisa- I did get Pantry Full of Sunshine a little bit ago. I have the corrugated roofing, and hadnt found a great price on stainless windowscreen- with commodity prices going up Ill likely source it this winter and get it over with!

[DarJones]

Leather Britches require the right variety to be worth the effort. There are 3 varieties that I've grown that fill the bill. Turkey Craw, Tobacco Worm, and Barnes Mtn Cornfield. As noted above, a light blanching can be used to deactivate enzymes, but this is not the traditional way they were made. The way they were traditionally made was to string em and dry em on the porch or in the attic where things get hot and dry them fast. Best is to put them someplace where insects won't bother them. No inputs except a needle and thread and you can make your own thread with a wad of cotton.

DarJones