Kentucky Wonder, Romano (Italian)
Chinese Long Beans
FoodFood InformationSidesLegumes
During the winter months the North is supplied with green beans shippedfrom Florida, California, and Mexico. During the rest of the year they aregrown locally throughout the country.
These beans are harvested while they are still very young, when the pods,either flat or round, are tender enough to eat raw and when the inner seed(also called the bean) has just started to form. They are widely used inall areas of the country as a fresh, canned, and frozen vegetable.
In most of the nation green beans are known as string beans, datingback to when most of the varieties had an inedible fibrous string that ranthe length of the bean. In the past fifty years stringed varieties havedisap peered from the marketplace and been replaced by newer varieties inwhich these inedible strings have been bred out. In the South, green beansare known as snap beans, describing what happens when it is bentin half-it snaps like a twig. If it doesn't snap but just bends withoutbreaking, it will eat as tough as shoe leather.
The more common varieties of green beans are the round podded types. Thebetter round varieties include Black Valentines, Blue Lake, Yellow Wax,Purple, Harvesters, and Contenders. All the round podded varietiesare sometimes called Plentifuls. The flat beans used to be calledBountifuls but are now known as pole beans. The best of theseis the Kentucky Wonder. While the pole bean varieties are usually much largerthan the round varieties, those of equal quality are equal in tendernessand flavor. Beans that are yellow in color rather than green are known aswax beans. There are some green beans that reach a length of eight to twelveinches. One variety originated in France and is called Haricots Verts.A very long variety that is highly prized in Oriental cuisine is calledthe Chinese long bean (Yard-long beans).
Although we now have better refrigeration and faster transit than we hadtwenty-five years ago, today's green beans are seldom as young and tenderas they used to be. This decrease in quality results from the differencebetween machine-harvested and hand-picked beans.
Today there is a scarcity of farm labor in the United States, and what isavailable is too costly to compete with the machine. Until the 1940s thevegetable and fruit crops were harvested by migrant workers working forpitiful wages and under shameful working conditions. Today they are somewhatprotected by federal laws and are paid a minimum wage. Although these wagesare far from sufficient, it is now too costly to hand pick some crops andmigrant workers have been replaced by mechanical picking machines.
These machines are mechanical marvels but are not nearly as selective andcareful as hand labor. The machines can't handle very young beans of themore fragile but better flavored and more tender varieties without breakingthem. As a result the growers use less tender varieties and don't pick themuntil they can withstand the rough handling of the machines. Nearly allthe round beans are now picked by machine. Since the flat pole beans can'tbe picked by machine, they very often are more tender than the round varieties.So even if you have never tried them before, buy pole beans if the roundbeans are not up to par.
Identifying tender green or wax beans of top quality is a snap. Ifthey don't snap, don't buy them. Professional produce buyers determine thequality of the bean by the way it feels. A young, tender bean wfll havea pliable, velvety feel. Only buy beans that feel fresh and look colorful.Avoid those that look or feel coarse and dried out or are discolored.