I'm almost embarrassed to put a green bean recipe on here, but a couple of people have come over and tasted the ones I make for Lily and asked how I made them. Seriously? Green beans? This is food I grew up with... coming from a country family in South Louisiana. But anyway, here are Lily's favorite green beans.
I should preface this with saying that I can not stand to eat green beans out of a can. They just have that canned "weird" flavor. So we ALWAYS use fresh green beans. Secondly, this gives Lily about 20 minutes of "snapping" time, where I can focus on some other aspect of the meal. Also, if you have a recipe where your kids will eat practically half a pot of veggies, you embrace it!!!
Ingredients:
- A big bag of green beans.. picked fresh
- Several (maybe 4-5) pieces of maple flavored bacon
- A handful of diced onion
- A handful of sliced almonds
- Flaked sea salt, large restaurant pepper, garlic powder
- cut the bacon into "lardons" - about 1/2 inch pieces
- cut the onions into a small dice
- find a kid to snap your beans - the size doesn't really matter
- start a pot of water to boil for the beans.
- once boiling, add the beans until they are about 90% done.
- drain the beans when they reach this point.
- while the beans are boiling, saute the bacon over medium-high heat until about 3/4 done.
- It's important that you do NOT put the onions in with the bacon at the beginning. If you do, the water in the onions will prevent the bacon from browning and crisping properly.
- once the bacon is almost crisp, add the onions.
- saute the onions with the bacon until soft and translucent.
- add the drained (blanched) green beans to the crisped bacon and onions.
- adjust seasonings by adding salt, pepper, garlic powder and slivered almonds.
- stir the beans into the bacon mixture to ensure that a little of the maple bacon grease has coated all of the beans.
- cook for maybe a couple of minutes more for the flavors to incorporate, then remove from heat.
- the beans should still be firm, not mushy, salty, maple'y, peppery, crunchy from the bacon and almonds, sweet from the tender onions
- Mmmm! enjoy!
I hope you have enjoyed this recipe. If you'd like to see more of what we cook around here, please visit my Recipe Index. There are tons of ideas on there of things you can cook for/with your family. Here are a few things to pique your curiosity:
:.
