How to Meal Prep Green Beans

Green beans are budget-friendly, versatile, and nutritious, making them the ideal vegetable for your weekly meal plan. They’re quick, easy to meal prep, and welcome at a weeknight meal or when feeding a crowd.

How to Meal Prep Green Beans

Whether your family likes the thin, quick-cooking string beans or the thicker, flat Romano green beans, you’ll save time preparing them in advance. Most green beans are best eaten cooked, but you can decide to prep them and store them raw or cooked.

Buy the Freshest

Like all veggies, the freshest are always the best for meal prep. Choose crisp, slender beans with vivid color and no blemishes or bruises. They should “snap” when you break them.

Look out for unusual and colorful varieties in summer at farmer’s markets and organic stores: they may be labeled green beans, string beans, haricots verts, bush beans, or snap beans.

If you don’t prep them immediately, refrigerate unwashed beans in a plastic bag. Pop in a piece of paper towel to avoid sogginess. They will last about a week.

Wash Thoroughly

When you’re ready to prep the beans, wash them thoroughly. Unlike other vegetables, you can’t peel green beans, so you need to wash off all pesticides and dirt from handling.

Here’s how to wash green beans:

1. Soak the beans in clean, cool water for a couple of minutes.
2. Rinse the beans thoroughly.
3. Dry with a paper towel.

Trim

Green beans need the fibrous stem end trimmed off. There are two ways to do this:

1. Gently bend the bean in your hands and snap off the very end.
2. Use a sharp chef’s or paring knife to slice off the stems. It’s easiest to line up the beans on a chopping board and do this all at once.

My granny taught me to top and tail beans, gently pulling off the long “string.” I was sad to learn that you don’t need to remove the tender top shoots, as they’re entirely edible. And most bean varieties have been bred to remove the fibrous strings.

Remove any brown spots and discard all shriveled and soft green beans.

Chop

Decide how you plan to use the beans, which will dictate how you chop them. For example:

• For soups and casseroles, chop the beans into one-inch chunks. Keep the pieces the same size so that they cook consistently.
• For salads and stir-fries, cut the beans in half on the diagonal.
• For side dishes, keep the beans whole or sliced in half.
• If your beans are fresh and tender, chop them into batons and pack them as snacks.

Store Raw Beans

You can stop your meal prep at this point and store the raw beans. Pack the beans into airtight containers and stack them in the fridge as soon as you’re done chopping. Do not leave them at room temperature for more than an hour. The beans will remain fresh in the refrigerator for four to seven days.

If you’ve got fresh, tender beans, they will quickly cook if added to a stir-fry straight from the fridge. However, the flatter Romano green beans must be cooked for about 20 minutes in a long-cooked stew, casserole, or sauce.

Blanch Beans

Another way to meal-prep green beans is to pre-cook or blanch them. Blanching means boiling quickly. This pre-cooking is ideal to ensure you have beans ready to throw into a meal prep salad, add to a stir-fry, or quickly sautée, saving you lots of time. Blanching is also a great way to prevent the beans from spoiling.

Blanching is an easy process:

1. Add the trimmed green beans to a pot of salted, boiling water.
2. Cook for two to four minutes and no longer.
3. The beans are done when they turn bright green. They must still be crisp – don’t overcook them, especially if you plan to add them to a cooked meal.
4. Drain the beans in a colander.
5. Immediately place the beans in a bowl of cold water with iced cubes. Soak the beans for as long as you boil them.
6. Remove the beans and pat them dry with a paper towel.

Store Blanched Beans

Once the blanched beans have cooled, store them in airtight containers in the fridge. Eat them within four to five days. They will lose their crunch the longer you keep them.

Green beans are also perfect freezer vegetables. Place them in portion sizes in freezer bags, flatten them, and freeze them. Remember to label the packages with the date and contents. You can freeze green beans for up to 10 months.

There is no need to defrost the beans before adding them to soups, casseroles, or stir-fries.

I recently bought a vacuum sealer – and I’m obsessed. Meal-prepping is transformed; I can buy bulk and fit more in the freezer. Vacuum sealing keeps veggies fresher, prevents the dreaded freezer burn, and stops them from drying out. 

10 Ways to Use Meal-Prepped Green Beans

Green beans are incredibly versatile. Most cooking methods are acceptable but don’t boil green beans, as this removes much of their flavor and nutrients.

Here are some ideas for using green beans:

1. Add blanched beans to a fresh, green salad with plenty of lettuce, cucumber, and rocket.
2. Thinly sliced green beans make a tasty addition to coleslaw.
3. Sautée green beans in olive oil or butter and a squeeze of lemon. This is a delicious side with fish.
4. Toss beans with sautéed slivered almonds for green beans almondine.
5. Green beans are a great addition to vegetable soups.
6. Tray-baking green beans make them delightfully crisp, especially when well-seasoned. Enjoy them instead of fries as part of a sheet-pan meal.
7. Blanched beans and pesto make a gorgeous summer pasta topping.
8. Air-fry green beans for a crunchy snack.
9. Smash raw beans and top them with a spicy chili and ginger dressing as an unusual salad with scallions and sesame seeds.
10. Use your beans for the ubiquitous Thanksgiving casserole. You can assemble the holiday dish the day before, leaving off the onions, and keep it in the fridge until baking. Unfortunately, this is not a dish you can make and freeze as the sauce will separate.

My grandmother used her home-canned green beans and a can of Campbell’s soup. I use my blanched, frozen meal-prepped beans and make the mushroom sauce from scratch. But I ensure I’ve got French fried onions my granny always used.

Why You Should Include Green Beans in Your Meal-Prep

There’s a good reason why green bean casserole appears on every holiday table: beans are inexpensive and stuffed with nutrients.

Here’s what you get in a single serving of green beans, which is half a cup:

• Only 16 calories: Green beans are an excellent choice if you’re watching your weight.
• Fiber: A fiber-rich diet lowers cholesterol, improves heart and digestive health, decreases the chance of colorectal cancer, 
• Vitamins A, C, and K: Vitamins fight inflammation and improve your immunity.
• Folates: this vitamin B variant is essential for the growth of babies in the womb. It can help reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety.
• Antioxidants: These nutrients destroy free radicals and reduce cell damage.
• Low FODMAP: You can eat cooked green beans even if you have IBS or other digestive issues.
• No fat, sodium, or cholesterol: You can eat loads of green beans without impacting your blood pressure.

Conclusion

Green beans are ideal meal-prep veggies: they’re available year-round, are pocket-friendly, and are crowd-pleasers. Whether you meal-prep beans as raw or cooked veggies, green beans are versatile, nutritious, and quick, saving you time while keeping your family healthy.