Vegetable
Green bean
Judía verdeMongeta tendraPhaseolus vulgaris
It's the same plant that gives dried beans, only the pod is picked before the beans swell. The test of a good one: it snaps cleanly.
When
Around: Jun–Sept · At its best: Jul–Aug
Around: Jun–Sept · At its best: Jul–Aug
Around: Dec–Mar · At its best: Jan–Feb
Around here
Green beans with potato, boiled and dressed with olive oil, are a lifelong supper in Catalan homes. At the market you'll mostly see flat (perona) and round (bobby) types. Local dried beans, like the mongeta del ganxet, are another story: that's a bean grown for the seed.
At the market
- Bright, even colour, with no brown marks.
- They should snap cleanly when bent; if they bend without breaking, they're old.
- The beans inside shouldn't show much: lumpy pods will be stringy.
- Pick ones of similar thickness so they cook evenly.
At home
- In the fridge, in a bag, unwashed and uncut.
- They keep four or five days.
- Always cook them: raw, they'll upset your stomach.
If you have too much
- Freeze them: topped, tailed and cut, blanched for three minutes, cooled in iced water and dried. About eight months.
- Pickle them with garlic and dill, like gherkins.
- Bottle them in sterilised jars, as grandmothers did for winter.
In the kitchen
- Boiled with potato, dressed with oil and salt: the classic supper.
- Sautéed with garlic and ham.
- Stewed with tomato and onion.
- In a warm salad with potato, hard-boiled egg and tuna.
- In a menestra, or in a Valencian paella if they're flat.
What it brings
Per 100 g, raw.
- Energy
- 31 kcal
- Water
- 90% water
- Carbs
- 7 g
- Sugars
- 3.3 g
- Fibre
- 2.7 g
- Protein
- 1.8 g
Stands out for
- High in vitamin K43 µg · 57% of what you need in a day
- Source of folate33 µg · 17% of what you need in a day
- Source of vitamin C12.2 mg · 15% of what you need in a day
Data from the USDA (FoodData Central). See the full table ↗ · How we decide what stands out
In the family recipes
- Olla de habichuelas Grandma's
The recipes are in Spanish.
Goes with
- TomatoJun–OctAn August tomato and a January one only share the colour. And a good tomato's worst enemy isn't winter: it's your fridge.
- CourgetteMay–SeptAnyone with a plant in the garden knows: one day it's a finger, three days later a baseball bat. The small ones are the good ones; the giants are water and seeds.
- PepperJul–OctGreen and red are usually the same pepper at two stages: the red one was left to ripen on the plant. That's why it's sweeter and dearer.