Our Favorite Bean Varieties

Perfect Snap and Crunch

It's hard for us to pick a favorite bean from our garden's crop. We love the pole beans, picked young and tender, that give just the right amount of snap and crunch to a picnic-perfect bean salad. But then there are the bush beans, with their striking striations of color, that we shell for the seeds that cook up meaty and creamy, great for that very same salad or pureed into a velvety summer soup. And shell beans have this advantage: They can be dried, then cooked all year long.