it was in austria when i ate the first time a salad with kaeferbohnen and i loved it so much that we bought some in the garden center to grow them on our own. i don´t know why but you can´t buy them everywhere in austria and even less in germany, not even in organic food stores. but as i had fallen in love with that salad it became a necessity that we had to grow them ourselves.

well, before i never had grown beans to dry and store. it was obvious to me that we should wait for harvesting them until they would be mellow. but then? it was not so easy to find some information, as it is so self-evident that no one had the idea to write it down. even my parents had only vague childhood memories on that.

so we sowed them out as usual and then let things go. we ignored the kaeferbohnen during the whole summer as we did with all the other beans which became too big to eat them fresh. it was already october when we harvested the beans. some of the shoots already dried during summer. so we podded them and laid the beans out to dry completely. all the other shoots, still a bit soft or new, we left on the plant and hang the whole plants on a dry place to allow to dry out completely.

in january we podded all the remaining beans, spread them out and allowed to dry on a warm place before we stored them in jars.

now i am looking forward to my own austrian keaferbohnen salad!