The Freshest Green Beans
July 7th, 2010 · 4 Comments · Posted in garden, Recipes
Green beans freshly picked
On May 21, we planted one of our vegetable beds with three different varieties of bush beans. Some of the Contender beans were ready to pick last night so daughter and I plied through the plants looking for dinner. These beans were so tender and succulent, I could not possibly subject them to my favorite method of cooking green beans, which is to braise them for three hours with tomato and fennel seed and bacon.
Beans and bacon were made for each other
On the spur of the moment, and with what I could immediately lay my hands on in the fridge, I cut the beans into pieces, cooked them in salted water and tossed them with some Allan Benton bacon in the iron skillet. The beans, coming fresh from the garden, were so tender. And you know they love being smeared with bacon grease. But I couldn’t help thinking this dish was missing something. Fried shallots, maybe? Or pickled shallots? Sometimes we like to toss our beans with sauteed cherry tomatoes, but our cherry tomatoes are not quite ready yet.
What would you suggest?
I just did a batch of fridge green bean and onion pickles this past weekend. First time using green beans, but it seemed In this heat one of the best things to try.
But, I also recently decided just to chop and throw them with some dressing raw. Crunchier than peas, of course but i found the bush beans to be a great cold side salad.
Thanks for the blog. I love it.
We’re fans of adding some blue cheese and walnuts to the bacon and beans.
Drewguy…I was just about to protest that a little butter and salt is all any good green bean needs…but your suggestion of blue cheese and walnuts and bacon? *swoon*
Our friend Larry suggests placing springs of fresh oregano in the cooking water, then tossing the beans with some oregano leaves. We tried it last night with some freshly picked Italian flat beans. Turns out you don’t have to toss the beans with oregano because they pick up plenty of leaves from the cooking water. Delicious.