See how pretty they are? How can you resist a treat like that?
I suppose you have to like green beans at least a little bit to enjoy this recipe. Choose the best fresh green beans you can find. You don’t have to do anything very special to them. Just trim the ends and rinse them.
Blanch them in boiling water for just a couple of minutes- seriously! You want them just slightly cooked, but you definitely don’t want them limp. You want them to stay bright green and crisp!
Then drain the green beans and rinse them well with cold water. You don’t want them to keep cooking, so keep rinsing until they are pretty well cooled-off.
There are a few ingredients in the pickling marinade that are key to giving it that spicy flavor: peppercorns (I used these pretty multi-colored ones, but you can use any…), kelp or seaweed, and dried red chiles.
These ingredients are mixed with rice vinegar, sugar and kosher salt. Everything is brought just to a boil.
The boiling pickling liquid is poured over your blanched green beans in a bowl.
Lemon slices are added. And then it sits until it comes to room temperature. Slit open a couple of the red chiles and let that spicy flavor spill forth into the pickling liquid. Refrigerate until you’re ready to start munching.
The beans turn out crisp and tangy with hints of spice and lemon. They are a perfect, low calorie, weight-watching, summertime treat. In fact, if you’re on Weight Watchers, you can munch on these and count zero points. How cool is that? Enjoy 🙂
