Tiny and tender, bright green French beans are smaller than common green beans and wear a soft velvety skin. Quite meaty for their size, their crisp texture offers a delicate sweet green flavor. Tender and not the least bit tough, the French bean retains the string from its original form. Strings have been bred out of most other green bean varieties.

Vividly green, stringless and an old time favorite, this bean is long and straight, this rather fancy bean has a velvety feel. Offering a sweet taste, it offers exceptional tender crisp texture.

Italian flat beans may be eaten whole as the pod is at first edible. The bean itself is crisp and has a wonderful crunch and a mild flavor. Be careful not to overcook as Italian flat beans can become mushy and lack their usual good flavor.

Cheery yellow wax beans are slender, long and uniform in. Varying from light to deep yellow, this attractive wax bean has a thinner velvety skin and a subtler flavor than the common green bean.

Cranberry beans, often called shell beans, begin to appear in late summer as the harvest of string beans slows. Their
pale red streaked pods yield white beans blotched with the same red color. The creamy, slightly nutty flavors of cranberry beans is appreciated in plain preparations or combined with other ingredients.

Two to five creamy-green colored beans are encased in the lima bean’s flat slightly curved green inedible pod. Offering a mild and mellow flavor when cooked, the flavor is reminiscent to that of the butter bean. To shell, press on the pod’s inside curve; split open and remove beans.

Offering tasty features, elegant snow peas are delicately sweet and meaty and crisp and tender, a flavor and texture all of their very own. Sometimes there are strings, but they do not need to be removed.

Succulent and tender, shell peas offer a flavor that simply has to be tasted to be appreciated. Large grass-green bulging inedible pods enclose peas that are typically round and wonderfully sweet.