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Green String Beans
Old fashion way to cook string beans, break into pieces. Let stand in cold water for awhile. Put one half pound fat pork into a pint of cold water and cook for half an hour. Then add three pints of beans. Cook for one and half hours. If water should boil out add a little more warm water. Season and serve on platter with pork sliced.
A long-boiled bean dish in the older American manner, where the pork is the seasoning and the beans are meant to go soft rather than squeaky. Read the timing as a style choice, not an error.
- Fat porkIn recipes of this period "fat pork" generally means salt pork — cured, streaky belly or fatback rather than fresh pork, though the recipe does not specify. A 1/2 lb piece is right; if it is heavily salted, blanch it once and discard the water or the finished beans will be over-salted.
- QuantitiesThree pints of cut beans is roughly 1 1/2 lb, which serves four to six as a side. The pint of water plus the pork liquor is barely enough for that volume, hence the instruction to top up with warm water.
- The soakThe recipe does not say why the beans stand in cold water; freshening slightly limp beans is the likeliest purpose. Twenty to thirty minutes is plenty; modern beans do not need it unless they have gone limp in the refrigerator.
- TimingAn hour and a half will cook the beans right down; that is the intended result of this style. If you want them to hold shape, 20 to 25 minutes in the pork broth gives much of the flavour with tender-firm beans.
- Adding waterWarm water, not cold, keeps the pot from dropping off the boil.
- SeasoningSalt last and taste first. Between the cured pork and the reduced liquor, the pot may need nothing but black pepper. Some cooks finish beans of this kind with a little cider vinegar, though this recipe does not.
- ServingThe recipe has the pork sliced and served on the platter with the beans; it says nothing about what to do with the pot liquor.