Kitchen

[RedTop]

I just got a blast from the past with the term greasy shorts!  My grandparents grew rows and rows of this green bean and dried the bean for planting seed for the next year.  

Greasy shorts are a very old variety of green bean whereas most of the green beans we grow today are hybrid varieties.  Am sure the seeds for greasy shorts have to be ordered from a seed catalog; I wouldn't expect to walk into Farm Bureau and see a keg full of them that I could buy a pound or two.  

At maturity, this bean pod is probably between 6-8" long, and full of beans; the pod has a very bumpy appearance from the full beans inside the pod.  My farm grandma often shelled many of these beans so the pot was full of loose beans as well as beans inside pods.  I preferred eating the loose beans.  The green pods cook up very shiny and that supposedly is where the name greasy shorts come from.  

My parents always grew Kentucky Wonders and in later years we grew Blue Lake variety of bush beans.   

Fresh green beans are not to be found in this area of WV until close to Easter.  Our one local market will open April 1st.   The owner buys whatever produce is available from his NC supplier.   

[silkyk]

This is a dandy little tool for stir fry green beans. Cuts them up fast and perfect. Got it on Amazon.

[Sooner]

@RedTop My grandmother grew Kentucky Wonder green beans that us hillbillies cooked a long time with ham, bacon or something like that.  

We don't eat as many green beans as we used to, doing more salads and steamed or roasted vegetables now, and for me the LeSueur canned green beans are great.  I don't have to fool with them before cooking and they are the right amount of doneness for us. 

[RedTop]

@Sooner 

I buy the 50 oz cans of Hanover Blue Lake green beans for my family.  Since Covid, the cans are full of small pod green beans; just past the haricot verts maturity stage, which is not what we prefer.  

I'm assuming in order to maintain a presence on store shelves the beans are being harvested much earlier compared to the usual full maturity stage.

[ECBG]

---

@Carolina925 wrote:

I love fresh green beans! Grateful for a neighbor who grows them and keeps me well supplied during the growing season. I like to air fry mine and just snack on them.

@ECBG , I used to get greasy cuts when we had a house in WNC and have never heard of anyone speaking of them since we sold it! I loved them and have been on a search for them for over 30 years! I started to think they must have been called something else. Well, I forgot what I wanted to say about greasy cuts so had to come back  I love them cooked with new potatoes. Summer begins when I have green beans and potatoes.

---

@Carolina925 

Yesterday, when I was reading FB on for a local produce, greasys were requested.  It seems the produce lady said they come from Florida.  I remember them as a child.

[novamc1]

Got a 2-lb. bag of fresh green beans at Costco earlier this week and oven-roasted half of them on top of sliced onion, seasoned with olive oil/garlic/salt/pepper and some bacon crumbles.  Covered the pan with foil to help the beans steam somewhat. 

The onions did a  nice job of keeping the beans moist (which is a tip I got from a food magazine.)

Can't wait to fix the other half of the bag tonight, because they sure were good.

The bacon crumbles came from Costco and do a good job of  lending flavor to veggies, but I don't actually eat much of the bacon itself. The tiny pieces tend to be rather hard to chew after cooking.

I was surprised the first time I saw them at Costco.  Bought them because the label says they are real bacon, not the fake stuff I've seen elsewhere.  DH likes me to sprinkle them on his salads. I'll stick to using them as a flavor enhancer when cooking certain foods.