Leather Britches Recipe : Taste of Southern (2024)

Follow our complete, step-by-step, photo illustrated instructions to learn how to make Leather Britches. This is an old Appalachian way of drying green beans for use during the winter months. Printable recipe included.

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I dried some green beans for just over a year, then made Leather Britches. It’s an old Appalachian way of drying and preserving summer vegetables to try and make it through a cold hard winter.

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I enjoy learning new things about how the so called “ole timers” use to do stuff. It didn’t matter so much in my younger days, but the older I get, the more interesting stuff like this has become to me.

Take these Leather Britches for example. I read about them in the Foxfire Book, printed in 1972, that featured stories and photos about life in the Appalachia area. It’s filled with great stories about some of the folks that lived there, how they built log cabins, the crafts they made, how they killed hogs for food, and how they preserved and cooked food back in the day. Days without indoor plumbing and running water, and days of cooking by the hearth or on a wood cook stove.

There wasn’t actually much about Leather Britches in the book, but it was enough to make me think, “I can do that,” and that I wanted to give it a try. It only took me a year to complete this simple recipe. Smile.

It appears the name came from the fact that the dried up green beans had the appearance of leather. Don’t guess anyone really knows that for sure. Sounds good to me though.

Folks back then would take greasy beans, or fresh green beans and string them up on thread. The beans were then hung in a dry place, or even under the porch of the house to dry out. They kept them out of the sunshine, and hopefully the bugs would leave them alone, long enough for them to dry to preserve them.

This was the way they stored beans from the summer harvest to be used during the hard, cold winter months. Times were tough in those areas. It was just a basic way of survival for them.

When dry, they would put the beans, string and all, in a paper sack, maybe a jar, and close them up until they were ready to cook them. Then, the beans would be washed and soaked overnight to re-hydrate them for cooking.

It often took about all morning to cook the beans so they would be tender enough to eat. Fatback, side meat, or maybe a ham hock would be used to season the beans. And, they say the beans fixed this way had a much deeper flavor than just fresh green beans.

With all that in my head, I started the process. It wasn’t intentional, but I ended up leaving my beans out to dry for over a year before cooking them. How did they turn out? Follow along and let’s see, shall we?

Ready to give some Leather Britches a try? Alright then, let’s head on out to the kitchen, and… Let’s Get Cooking!

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Leather Britches Recipe – You’ll need these ingredients.

I started this recipe with about a pound and a half of fresh green beans. You can certainly prepare more if you desire. I just wanted to test out the process to enjoy the experience.

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Beans on a string is what they should be called. Smile. I took this photo on September 01, 2018. Each string is about two feet long.

I didn’t take any photos of the process at the time, but here is what you need to do.

Wash your green beans and then let them dry or pat them good and dry with paper towels. Thread a large needle with some strong white thread and you’re ready to begin. The stem end of the bean needs to be snapped off. You can leave the pointed end on. You can either use the whole bean, or do like I did, and snap the beans into one or two smaller sections.

Take the needle and run it though the middle of a section of the bean, being careful to not puncture the actual bean inside, but trying to insert the needle between the beans. You’re going in the side of the bean and not the long way down the middle.

When you put the first bean on the string, wrap the thread around that bean and tie a knot in it to hold the bean on the thread securely. Then, one at a time, thread the needle through each bean and slide it down to the next one. Repeat the process until you have a string filled with beans. Tie a knot around the last bean, just like you did with the first bean.

Hang the beans in a dry, damp free closet or storage area and let them dry out completely.

After a month or two, when the beans are fully dried out, place the beans in a paper bag for storage until ready to use.

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One year later.

This is how the same beans looked after letting them hang in a closet for just over a year. I took them out on October 03, 2019 – a total of 398 days later, or 1 year, 1 month, 3 days.

As you can see, they are pretty well dried out. Smile.

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And here is a close up of how the dried green beans now look.

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This is all of the beans after I pulled them off of the strings. Most of them slid off pretty easily, but some seemed to be stuck to the string, but I broke them and pulled them off.

All in all, this was just a few more than I could hold in one big handful.

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Rinse the beans really good under cold running water.

I placed the dried beans in a colander and turned on the cold water. I tossed them around and rinsed them really good to remove any dirt and dust that had accumulated on them.

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Cover with cold water and let soak overnight.

I placed the beans in a bowl and added more than enough water to cover them. Then, I just let them set out on the counter for a good 24 hours. This is to re-hydrate the beans as much as possible.

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Next day, I placed the beans and the water in a stock pot to cook them.

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Fatback for seasoning the beans.

I was eager to share this with you. This is a piece of fatback that my auction friend Joyce shared with me a few months back. Her nephew had killed hogs and salted and prepared this himself.

You just don’t find big pieces of fatback like this in stores these days, or at least I haven’t been able too.

Mama always bought fatback from our local store in big hunks like this. Needless to say, it came from a nice, fat hog. Smile.

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This is about 1/3rd of the block from the photo above. Mama would often have used a chunk this big in cooking her vegetables, but she was cooking more at a time than what few dried beans I had here.

I remember she would cut that whole long strip into sections like I have above. She sliced the fat part, right down to the skin part, but not through the skin. This went in the pot with the vegetables instead of a ham hock or side meat.

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I added the piece of sliced fatback into the pot of beans. As you might be able to see, the soaked beans had plumped up a good bit and had regained a lot of their dark green color. Let’s put them on the stove top.

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Cooked and ready.

I put the beans on a low simmer and covered the pot. I ended up cooking them for 2-1/2 hours before they became as soft as I wanted them. After about two hours, they were still a bit tough and crunchy, so I let them cook awhile longer.

At the end, I did add some salt, black pepper, and a tad of sugar to taste. Mama always added a pinch of sugar to about all of her vegetables. Smile.

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Enjoy!

And there you have it – Appalachian style Leather Britches.

How did they taste you ask? Well, they did seem to have a bit deeper and more intense flavor, but not a great deal I thought. A ham hock might have added a bit more flavor, but this way, the actual taste of the bean could shine through more. They did get fairly tender after 2-1/2 hours. If I had cooked them longer, I would have had to add more water and I didn’t want to do that.

You don’t have to let them hang and dry for a year. You could just let them go for a couple of months instead if you want to try it out. I find it interesting and fun to explore these old ways of cooking. I hope you will too.

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Steve

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Tags: Appalachian Leather Britches, dried green beans, home dried beans, leather britches, made from scratch, pork, side dishes, Steve Gordon, Taste of Southern

Category: Side Dishes