Question
Larry Shearer
The last time I steamed fresh green string beans (from a local farmer's market) I ended up with copper/ red colored water in the steamer. What causes this and is it a concern?
Answer
This is actually something that's pretty common, um, with steaming stream beans. Um, there are a couple things that it could actually come from. One is the bean itself. Sometimes there's a chemical reaction that happens in the bean when the interior bean actually gets to a certain size that when, uh, that's steamed, it'll release off. Um, you know, this, uh, water droplets basically kind of coloring the, um, the water in the bottom. It'll come out as kind of a red or copper, you know, I wouldn't say like dark red, but kind of reddish, um, or copper. Now there are other things that could be happening in chemical reactions too, like using iodized salt in a pan and depending on the type of pan could actually make it turn the color as well too. But more likely than not, it's actually just the natural chemical that's coming outta the bean itself, which is a very common thing and you don't have to worry about that at all. Um, sometimes it might be the water you're actually using too, so make sure that the water that's in the pan isn't actually changed color, right? So it's actually make sure your water's not copper or red when you're starting out. If it is, that's probably a really high iron content in your water and you might want to consider doing a filtration system or something on your water to be able to kind of get some of the iron out. But more likely than not, it's going to be just the chemical reaction coming from the bean itself and there's no concern at all.
