How To Make Super-Easy, Fast, Refrigerator Dilly Beans
by Colleen Vanderlinden • August 9, 2010 • Miscellaneous • 20 Comments
I don’t know about you, but I reach that point every summer, right around mid-August, where I can’t look at another bean. I don’t care if they’re yellow or green, or even the pretty purple ones I’m growing this year. That’s when it’s time to pull out the big guns: time to make some dilly beans.
Dilly beans are vinegar-y, garlicky, dilly (obviously…) bits of crisp deliciousness with just a little bit of a kick to them thanks to the addition of hot peppers. The heat can be adjusted to your liking, so whether you like them mild or zippy, it will work just fine.
Oh, and the best part: you don’t need any canning supplies for this project. You don’t even need special jars. I reused a jar from store-bought sauerkraut for mine. Use whatever you have on hand, as long as it’s glass and has a lid.
This really couldn’t be easier.
Here’s what you’ll need: 2 cups of beans (about one huge, overflowing handful), 1 cup of vinegar, 1 cup of water, 2 1/2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt, 1/2 of a medium onion, sliced thinly, 2 sprigs of fresh dill (or 1 teaspoon of dill seeds), 1/2 teaspoon of whole black peppercorns, and 1/4 to 1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes (depending on how hot you want them) — you can also add a whole dried chile if you have one. I didn’t, so I used flakes.
1. Make your brine. This is the longest part of this process (and it only takes a few minutes!) so do this first. Add your water, vinegar, salt, sugar, and garlic (which you’ve minced) to a saucepan and bring it to a boil. Once it is boiling, turn it off and set it aside to cool down to room temperature.
2. Trim the beans. You want them all to fit in your jar with about an inch at the top so the brine covers them completely. You can trim both ends, or just the stem end. I think the pointy blossom end of beans are pretty, so I leave them. It’s up to you.
3. Blanch the beans. Bring a saucepan of water to a full boil, then dump the beans in and boil them for thirty seconds. Drain them, and quickly add them to a bowl of iced water to shock them and stop the cooking process. You want your beans to be brightly colored and still crisp.
4. Drain the beans and set them aside. Add your onions, dill, red pepper flakes, and peppercorns to your jars.
5. Now add your beans to the jars. They look prettiest standing upright, but don’t worry about being perfect. The easiest way is to lay the jar on its side, or hold it horizontally, and place the beans inside.
6. Go ahead and pour your brine in once it has reached room temperature. Fill the jar to 1/2 inch below the top of the jar, and put the lid on. Place the jar of dilly beans in the fridge, and let them sit for at least two days before eating them. They’ll keep for up to six months in the fridge, but I’ll bet you foldable money that you won’t have them around nearly that long!
I hope you give these a try. They’re really easy, and a great way to preserve all of those crisp beans from your garden.
More About Preserving the Harvest:
How to Make Dill Pickles
How to Oven Dry Tomatoes
OK, this does look easy. (In other words, I feel confident I could do it.) Does the pepper have to be dried? Or could I chop up a tiny amount of fresh hot peppers? (I really want to use my ONE jalapeno (yes, one) for something…)
I have to ditto Monica, that does look really easy. All that canning and preserving talk on Twitter sounds interesting but complicated as heck.
Yummy!! I love dilly beans!
Monica — You can definitely do this! You could definitely chop up your fresh jalapeno and use it for this.
MBT — This is definitely one of the easiest ways to preserve. I can tomatoes too (which I’ll be posting about in a couple weeks once my Romas are ripe) and that is a somewhat annoying (for me, at least) process.
Meems — They are SO good!!
Wow Colleen, what an awesome step-by-step guide for dilly beans! I have yet to try them although I have heard many say they are fantabulous.
I’m really looking forward to giving this a go. Thanks!
Could I do basically the same thing with lil cucumbers for pickles, or is that an entirely different process?
Tee — Thanks! Yes, you could use the same process for making refrigerator pickles. You’d want to let the pickles sit for a week (instead of just two days) before eating them though to give the brine plenty of time to flavor the cucumbers.
This looks great!
I’m going to give it a try!
thanks for sharing!
Debby Beachy db
Gosh, that looks amazingly delicious. More encouragement for me to grow a garden next year!
Thank you for sharing, Colleen, they look great! (Love the Fiesta plate in photo!)
Thanks so much for this easy and delicious-sounding recipe! The pics are really helpful too….now if I could just get over eating my beans raw in the garden then I can make some. (Seriously, I didn’t plant nearly enough beans!
Finally! I’ve been looking for a dill bean recipe that doesn’t require the whole “canning” process! Thank you so much for sharing! Can’t wait to try it!
ok, so i made this recipe a couple weeks ago and it was fantastic. when i went back to look at it again today, i swear it’s completely different than what it was just a couple weeks ago.
am i crazy?
My husband pickles just about anything he can get his hands on and then we have pickle juice for dirty martinis all year long! (And the pickles are are great too!)
Our family favorites: cabbage, green tomatoes, garlic, baby carrots. The only difference in our brine is no sugar.
Wow, can’t wait to try it. My beans just started blooming! I live in ND, tho!
Boni — They are so good! I’m waiting for my first big bean harvest of the year, too, so I can make some of these again
Pingback: What’s the dealio with Dilly Beans? | Whole Green Love
Pingback: The week that tomatoes became that much more important… | Lazy Parrot CSA
I watched and helped my mother and grandmother can when I was a kid. I just started canning 3 years ago at the ripe old age of 45! I started with tomatoes cuz I had a bumper crop and *refused* to let them go to waste. I’ve had some bummer flops and a lot of things are still a work in process like apple butter and grape jam – i have grapes and i wish i could master that art! But thanks for this recipe cuz i’ve been doing refrig pickles and we ate them as fast as i could make them! was wondering if i could do the same with the gazzillion beans we have. Thanks so much for the recipe! Monica & MBT… give it a try and even if it doesn’t work the first time, keep trying. I developed my own pickling spice for our own family’s tastes. It really is a lot of fun!
Thanks for this recipe which I tried out yesterday and am looking forward to tasting the results. I went searching for a recipe when we found a pound of green beans in our CSA share after buying a pound at their farmers’ market stand!! Is there a way to keep the bright green color, as mine have faded since yesterday?
Great article! We will be linking to this particularly great article on our website. Keep up the good writing.