Red Noodle Beans

Chinese red noodle beans were an experiment this year. I'd never had them before, either eaten or grown. Honestly I decided to grow them because they look cool. Yup, that very mature and well researched reason. But the seed was inexpensive, it was a heritage type of bean, I had the space. I decided to go for it.


Seriously, don't these look cool? (Image from http://www.cherrygal.com/images/RedNoodleNew.jpg)

We planted a single row of them in Fwigf. I proceeded to spend all summer worried about them. The reviews said they grew like kudzu, mine were a bit short. They were supposed to get 8 feet tall, they were barely three feet by mid-July/early August. They hadn't put off a single flower or bud and it was approaching mid-August. I had written them off as a loss resolved not to plant them next year and chocked it up to a learning experience.

Then they exploded.

No seriously. In two weeks I went from 3 foot stalks with nothing happening to an over grown hedge putting off massive beans by the handful. For context on size, each bean is roughly 18-24 inches long. They go from blossom to full bean in 3-4 days. I have roughly 10 pounds sitting at home. That we harvested today. This isn't counting the maybe 3-4 pounds I dehydrated for soup mixes last week.

Apparently noodle beans are fantastic in stir-fry. They can also be used instead of green beans in any recipe. I'm debating the pros and cons of making green bean casserole (the kind where you use the can of cream of mushroom soup and fried onion strings) using these instead. In fact? Screw it. I'm going to do it.

But I'm going to can them first so I can do it for Thanksgiving. Maybe I'll do a mix of these and green beans in the casserole for Christmas. Red and green beans swimming in white. That's festive right? Gross sounding. But festive.