Bottling French beans

[Gra]

Bottling vegetables is often not recommended in this country but in France it is quite common, especially French beans.
Essentially it using the water bath method. The beans are topped and tailed as necessary. These are then blanched, really only to soften them to make it easier to put into the jars. The tops are put on the jars and the jars placed in a big pan and covered in salted water. The water is then heated to 95deg.C and kept there for 2 hours before being left to cool.
when we did this, we were dealing with quite a large quantity and the beans, once the tops and tails had been pinched off, were put into a pillowcase and dropped into boiling water for probably 5 mins (these were purple beans and they went green). These were then left to cool, before being put into sterilised jars. Care was taken in Packing the beans in and getting the beans to stand up straight in the jars, then swirling around so the jars were filled to within about 20mm of the top, and looking very neat. the jars were filled to within about 30mm of the top with salted water (1 level tablespoon os coarse salt to 1 litre of water. Each 1l jar took about 1/3l of water). the seals were put on and e lids clipped down. The jars were then put in a great device, a cast iron cauldron that took 12 jars. The jars were placed on and wrapped in teaclothes and largish stones wedged down the sides to prevent the jars rattling around and breaking. Stones were also placed on top of the jars. The thing was then filled with cold water to cover the tops of the jars. The great thing about the cauldron is that it comes with a cast-iron jacket and lid. A fire of wood is lit under the cauldron, between it and the jacket. The fire swirls around inside the jacket and out a chimney at the back. Using a big thermometer the temperature was slowly raised to 95degC and then maintained for 2 hours. it was incredible how little timber was required to maintain the water boiling for such a long time, compared with the expense of gas it was incredible. Once the time was up, the fire was extinguished and everything just left to cool before the jars were removed.