Some recipes will request that you blanch your beans for pickling them. This simply means that you will cook your green beans quickly in boiling water and then dump them into an ice bath. This doesn’t impact flavor or safety but instead helps preserve the crunch and color of the beans after they’ve been pickled. You are welcome to blanch if you so choose, but I always skip this step because the beans soften when the brine hits them anyway. And frankly, the color of the beans doesn’t matter much to me, either!