Preparing Beans & Peas
Although these have a relatively short season, I feel that its well worth discussing them as they all have very
distinctive varied flavours, and no one should deny themselves the opportunity
to pop a pod of peas and taste their lovely sweet flavour or touch the velvety outer pods of broad beans.
However, I digress slightly.
Long Green Beans Or Kkidney Beans
These must be topped and tailed, then have their stringy edges removed with a potato peeler before they are sliced.
Just hold each bean upright vertically in your hand and run the peeler down each narrow edge.
To slice them, you can either treat them like French beans and slice them into small lengths
or cut the beans into strips with a sharp knife, this is quite a tricky thing to do by hand.
You can, however, buy a designated “bean slicer” which will do this perfectly for you.
It’s well worth investing in one of these, particularly if you are going to buy the beans while they are in season and
freeze them.
Peas & Broad Beans
These need to be podded, then rinsed before cooking.
Hold a pod length ways in both hands, position the first fingers and thumbs of both hands at the stalk ends of the pod, squeeze the pod at both
ends, and you should hear a little “pop”! as the pea pod begins to come
apart.
Now, open the pod out over a bowl and run your fingers along each half of the pod to dislodge the peas and I
bet you don’t cook them all because you will be eating them raw!
Broad beans are podded in exactly the same way, but be sure to take off the little flat half circles that may still be attached to each bean.
They anchor the bean to the pod inside, you will easily find them if you feel each bean carefully.
Just wash them before cooking, don’t be tempted to eat these raw though as they don’t
taste very nice!