Hi BP, sounds like your mom either used a regular canning recipe but didn't can the beans, or possibly made fermented pickles. I included a link below to a thread on fermented pickles.

I can personally recommend the Ball Blue Book's "dilled green beans" recipe, and Emeril's lemon-rosemary pickled green beans. I believe you will be able to find both of those recipes by searching this forum (remember to use the search at the bottom; the one at the top searches all of gardenweb).

Let us know if you have specific questions about the recipes or anything.

Melissa

Here is a link that might be useful: fermented green bean thread

Have made both dilly beans and the same recipe with rosemary and they're both great. Use full-length young beans, well, jar-length, anyway) and they do need to be heat processed, which is a short-cut your mother may not have taken but you need to. Let us know how they turn out.

There is the 'infamous' Dilly Bean recipe from Linda Lou...Tarragon seems to go well with pickled beans too.

Thanks for the posts. The recipe is "dilly beans" I found it this weekend in a blue ball book I bought at wal-mart. I'll let know how they turn out minus the cyaenne pepper... if I can ever find dill around here.