Let’s face it: trimming green beans is a chore. Laboriously snipping the tops and tails off of each bean with a paring knife definitely gets old after a while. Particularly when you’ve still got most of the pile left to go. Here’s what we do to make the job go by a little more quickly.
You can use a chef’s knife or a paring knife for this, whichever you feel more comfortable using. Start with just a few beans at once, and then you can work your way up to more as you feel comfortable.
1. Line Up the Beans - Use the edge of your knife or the side of your hand to line up a handful of beans on one side. (I’m right handed, so I line them up on the right.)
2. Trim Off the Tips - In one slice, cut off all the tips at once.
3. Repeat with the Other Side - Flip the beans around, line up the tips again, and trim off the other side.
Once you get into the rhythm of lining up the ends and trimming them off, prepping the beans goes by so much more quickly than doing each individual bean. You can also trim the other end without flipping (like in the last picture above), but the knife gets a little close to our fingers and we have a harder time holding the beans steady.
Do you have another method for trimming green beans?
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I use kitchen scissors to trim green beans. You can do a small handful at a time. Your way seems a little quicker, but for some reason I love using scissors in the kitchen whenever I can!
This is the most logical procedure. Why would people do it any other way?
I do the same thing, but only on the stem end. You are wasting perfectly good green bean otherwise!
I actually rather like the quiet, repetitive task of trimming beans by hand! In fact, I find those kinds of fiddly detail oriented tasks to be really relaxing and satisfying.
But I'll keep this tip in mind for when I'm in a rush.
Wow, do you really need to take THAT much off the ends?? I just snip like 1 mm, at most. This seems wasteful.
I second the snapping beans by hand comment. I can probably snap 5 faster than you can cut them, and the process reminds me of learning to do so from my grandmother on her porch some 20 years ago. I'll stick with it thanks.
i personally like snapping the ends off. I normally put someone to work snappin them for me, random children, my parents... ect. It gives them something to do, and provides me with some kitchen conversation!
I grew up snappin them on the front porch with my great-grandmother. So this brings back great memories!
I also enjoy the repetitive process of snapping the ends off one by one but with a hungry toddler underfoot and the clock ticking, sometimes I dont' have the luxury of contemplative meal prep. When that is the case, which is more often than not these days, I always use the method outlined above. Yes, I may cut off and waste a bit more than I would if I were breaking off the ends one by one but speed and efficiency are whats important here, not perfection.
I only trim the tops with the stems, the bottoms are fine. I also concur with trimming off *that much* seeming very wasteful. That is a lot of perfectly good bean.
This is how my mother taught me to trim green beans (with a chef's knife, I've never seen her use a paring knife). I still think it's kind of time-consuming. Snow peas are worse, we do snap off the tips and pull off the "strings" from each pod individually.
Thank goodness for this post.
I like snapping, too, but just the stem ends. I also will snap the beans in half if they are long and I am throwing them in a stir-fry, pasta, or soup. No need to dirty a cutting board or knife and probably twice as fast!
I snap the stem end off too. I pop them right into the thing I'm going to cook them in as I do them.
The fastest way is to grab a bunch with one hand. Snap the stem ends off with the other hand. I worked in a restaurant and one person could prepare a whole crate's worth of beans using this method pretty quickly. It takes way too long to line up your beans on a cutting board.
Wait, there's another way to do this?
....Isn't this what everyone does?...
I second scissors.
Geeze. Waste much?
So how to do a French cut?