The beans need to be picked, regardless of whether there’s an obvious string. If you delicately break tip backwards where the bean was once connected to the plant, you should be able to coax out the string.

But I have noticed lately that the store bought variety seem to be harder to string. She should stick with the locally grown ones.

My mom always cooked Kentucky Wonder beans & she pulled strings off them from BOTH ends. I agree w/Randal about the cooking method. I like to use Emeril’s “ham hock broth” idea of starting the meat cooking first. It becomes tender & then I pull it off the bone when cool enough to handle & add the beans & sliced onions at that point. If I don’t have ham hocks, I use bacon & also add a tiny bit of sugar to the cooking liquid. Sometimes I like to use white potatoes in with the beans but they don’t need to cook as long so I’ll add them for the last half of the cooking time. I’ve also had success cooking green beans in a crockpot using the same technique. Once the beans are exposed to the seasoned broth, they seem to absorb it better than if the meat is added to the pot at the same time the beans go in.

Y’all are making me want to go to The Cottage! Barbara says the beans don’t have strings, but I don’t see how that’s possible, either.

But this talk has me thinking of a Top 10 list of home cooking restaurants. I’m going to post it now. Weigh in.