IN PRAISE OF POLE BEANS

BELOVED THROUGHOUT APPALACHIA, THESE HEARTY LEGUMES ARE ALWAYS WORTH THE FUSS

- TEXT AND RECIPES BY SHERI CASTLE PHOTOGRAPHS BY JENNIFER CAUSE FOOD STYLING BY CHELSEA ZIMMER PROP STYLING BY PRISCILLA MONTIEL

BEFORE I WAS OLD ENOUGH TO RIDE A BIKE, my grandparents taught me how to string and break bushels of beans from their garden. We ate what we could each summer and then canned or dried all that our basement shelves could hold—enough to carry us through the long and snowy winters of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

It's hard to overstate the elemental importance of beans in Appalachian cuisine. My family, like many others, tended to rows of those that flourished in our climate, with colorful names like Rattlesnake, Pink Tip, Fat Man, cornfield, half-runner, cutshort, and greasy beans (which have naturally shiny green hulls and look as though they've been burnished with oil). I think of these heirloom legumes collectively as pole beans (or runner beans), though I understand that some actually grow on bushes that rarely get more than a couple feet high. They send out vines that can reach 12 feet in length and must be tied to trellises or trained to climb poles to keep them from overtaking the rest of the crops. Native Americans—the land’s original master gardeners—grew them near cornstalks to support the vines as part of a companion-planting technique known as the Three Sisters, which also included using squash as a ground cover.

Whether pole or bush, these beans stand apart from the ordinary green kind. More than a vegetable side dish, they are a satisfying, nutritious source of protein destined for the center of our plates. They aren't picked until the hulls are bumpy and nearly bursting with meaty beans, with tough, ropy strings running down each side. Then they must be strung and snapped into bite-size lengths or shelled out individually—all by hand. This labor is a price gladly paid for their incomparable flavor.