The green bean: the traditional

Culture and Cuisine

Growing beans means harvesting pods (fresh green beans) or grains (shelled beans). Bean plants are either “climbing” (lianas wrapped on tutors) or erect (called “dwarfs”).

For pod varieties, green bean is classified into three categories: fillet, eat everything and eat everything.

The green fillet bean is the “classic” green bean. It is a thin and smooth pod that remains crunchy after cooking. You have to choose it extra fine to fine; picked up too late, it starts to contain wires.
The bean eats everything, as the name implies eats itself in whole. In some countries, it is cut into small pieces to be cooked. In our markets you will also find green beans that are “yellow”: these are butter beans.

In Luberon Coeur de Provence, the green bean produced under shelter or in open fields, is present on our local markets from May to October. It can be eaten cold or hot, in a bundle, salad, pan-fried or mashed potatoes...
Placed in the vegetable tray of the refrigerator and slightly moistened, the bean will keep longer (3 or 4 days).

Did you know?

Beans are the distant descendant of a tropical liana native to South America. Domesticated for a very long time in the Andes, it was brought back to Europe by Christopher Columbus. It was not until the end of the 18th century that Italians began to consume the still immature young shoots of the bean in the form of fresh vegetable. Today, in Europe, France is the leading producer of fresh green beans ahead of Italy and Spain (/en.wikipedia.org)

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Popular in our plates, but also in our language: “The end of the beans” (The end of everything), “run on the bean” (exasperate), “for beans” (for nothing), “bean” (to be suckled) etc...