If this is your first attempt at water bath canning, I highly recommend pickled snap beans. It’s hard to mess them up: simply prepare your beans like you would to eat them fresh, heat up a vinegar brine, and pop everything in a canning jar. I find them even easier than cucumber pickles, primarily because extra prep steps and even fermenting are required to get the maximum crispness of cukes. With snap beans, crispness is guaranteed as long as you start with crisp beans. They’re also forgiving of your schedule; if pressed for time, you can harvest one day, snap the next, and process the third, keeping them in the refrigerator between steps.

When most people think of pickled beans, they think “dilly,” but it’s easy to play with the flavors. One of my favorite variations was inspired by Liana Krissoff’s wasabi-pickled beans in Canning for a New Generation. I’ve altered her flavors slightly so that I can use the horseradish that grows weed-like in my garden. Learn to make Definitely Dilly Beans and Asian-Style Pickled Beans