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Dried String Beans
Snip the ends and remove the strings from fresh-gathered string beans. With a sharp knife split the pods through the sides from which the strings were taken. Cut in halves crosswise if desired. Spread the prepared beans lightly over agate plates, set into a slack oven or on the shelf over the kitchen range, to become thoroughly heated through in fifteen or twenty minutes. Stir occasionally, but do not have a thick layer of beans on a dish. When hot throughout let dry slowly, either near the stove or in the sun. Quick heating at first is necessary in moist hot weather to avoid souring.
Kept near the kitchen range wax beans will be thoroughly dried in from twelve to twenty-four hours. At the last make very hot in the oven.
Store in a cloth sack or in tin pails. Before use, soak overnight in cold water. Cook as fresh beans.
A straightforward home-drying method from the era before freezers, and one that still works — the variables are heat source, airflow and how dry is dry enough.
- The hinge: get them brittleBeans are done only when they snap rather than bend, with no give at the seam. Anything still pliable holds enough moisture to mould in the sack. The recipe's own stated reason for "quick heating at first" is to avoid souring in moist hot weather.
- Slack ovenA slack or cool oven is usually reckoned somewhere in the region of 200-300F. Most modern ovens will not hold that; the lowest setting plus a wedged-open door, or a dehydrator at 125-135F, gives better control. The shelf over a kitchen range was simply a warm spot, cooler again than the oven itself.
- Agate platesAgate or agateware means speckled enamelled steel — the mottled grey pans still sold as camping ware. Any non-reactive tray works; perforated dehydrator trays or cake racks dry faster because air reaches both sides.
- BlanchingThe recipe skips it, but a two-minute steam or boiling-water blanch before drying deactivates the enzymes that turn dried beans hay-flavoured and dull khaki in storage. It also shortens drying time. Pat dry before spreading.
- The final hot ovenThat last blast may serve as a pasteurising step against insect eggs and surface organisms picked up during a long slow dry; the usual modern figure for that treatment is about 160F for 30 minutes. Cool completely before packing or condensation will undo the work.
- StorageCloth sacks and tin pails suited a dry, cool pantry and constant use. Sealed glass jars are safer now: fill them, then check daily for the first week for any beading of moisture inside. If you see it, the beans go back to dry.
- Soaking and cookingOvernight in cold water is right, and the soaking water can be used for cooking. Reconstituted beans stay chewier than fresh and want a long gentle simmer, an hour or more, not the few minutes fresh beans need.
- YieldGreen and wax beans lose about nine-tenths of their weight. Two pounds of prepared pods dries down to roughly 3 ounces, which rehydrates to something a little under a pound.
Drying was the cheapest preservation a household had — no jars, no sugar, no sealing wax, only heat and patience — and it is why a book of preserving instructions still finds room for it. Split-pod dried beans of this kind survive in the American South and southern Appalachia as "leather britches" or "shuck beans", though there the pods are more often strung whole on thread and hung to dry rather than spread on plates by the range. The instruction to split the pods lengthwise is the practical heart of the method: it opens the interior to the air so the seeds dry at something like the same rate as the wall. Wax beans get a passing mention, as an estimate of drying time.