Beans ka Acchar/Pickled Beans

We all know green beans, right? Quite common, million ways to cook them and consume them. So they are quite unassuming, our humble beans. With that in mind, I thought I'd share with you one of the ways my grandma would prepare them. It's essentially like a pickle, but it doesn't have the necessary preservatives so its shelf life, at best, is around 10-15 days. I wouldn't recommend holding on to this for any longer.

This is a fairly easy quick and easy recipe, that doesn't take too long to prepare and neither is it very complicated. This recipe will be approximately 3-4 servings in size

The ingredients

For this pickle, you'll need

1. Green beans - 100 grams

2. Small onions - 100 grams

3. Black mustard seeds - 1 tsp

4. Turmeric - 0.5 tsp

5. Red Chilli powder - 0.5 tsp

6. Mustard oil - 5 tsp

7. Salt - 1 tsp (or to taste)

The Process

So, I will forewarn you - you will be getting your hands dirty in this one.

1. Wash the beans and wipe them dry. Make sure no trace of water remains as any moisture will reduce shelf life.

2. Cut off the ends of the beans from both ends.

3. Add all the spices and the mustard oil in a container of your choice and mix well.

4. Now introduce the beans and the onions into the container.

5. It's now time to dirty our hands a little bit. Use your hands and basically rub the spice and oil mix all over the beans and onions. Shouldn't take long, and basically it's done when it looks like the photo I've attached above. OK honestly, you don't need to use your hands, mixing with a spoon is perfectly fine and reasonable. Using our hands is the traditional way of doing it, so I led with that :)

And that's it, simple and easy, but packed with flavour. If you ever decide to make it, I'd love to know your experience.

See you in the next one.