How to Make Green Beans Really Tasty
If you hate green beans, there is probably a good reason for this. Your experience with green beans is likely due to someone absentmindedly opening a jar of green beans and tossing it into a pot on the stove. Maybe they were French sliced (or not) and whoever cooked added some bacon lard (or not). Either way, you ended up with a mild (possibly bacon) sadness.
You may have also tried your hand at freshly cut green beans, lovingly sautéed in oil. You’ve spent hours (maybe days) pruning all those damn green beans, tossing them into a sharper pan, tossing them, lovingly salting them, maybe even thinking you ‘re trying to call them bean skewers. But then you tried them and … even more sadness? Outside – withered, leathery. And yet the insides – for some reason, are they still toothy to the touch? It’s a disaster all over the place and you will be forgiven if you ask if you know how to cook at all.
Nothing wrong. You definitely know how to cook. You simply failed to accept the two necessary extremes in cooking – whitening them , and then squeezing the ever-loving devil out of them. Think about what you want from a green bean (or any other vegetable, really): a flavorful appearance with a bright, delicate crunchy crust on the inside. This is difficult to achieve with a one-step cooking process, so you need to do two. Whitewashing them first gives the internal forum a head start so that the final charring doesn’t take too much work. By charring them, you get the flavor you want without relying on a hot pan to finish off the insides. It’s admittedly a pain in the ass, but still better than eating the dreaded green beans.
First, take out a large pot of boiling water; possibly the largest pot you have. This is because green beans usually sell for a pound and you hopefully buy a few pounds of them even if you don’t plan on eating them all at once. While the water is boiling, do the grueling job of pruning all the green beans. Or, if you’re very smart and wealthy and bought pre-trimmed beans, learn to moonwalk or do what rich people do with the extra time their wealth gives them. After boiling, pour the green beans into the water and set the timer for two and a half minutes. This works for two pounds of green beans. If you have less, reduce the time to two minutes. If you have more, lengthen this time by another 30 seconds. If you have a lot more, I think you should have thought about how to prepare them before purchasing a green bean farm, Mr. Moneybags.
When the timer rings, eat one. If it will make you say, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa less tirealnym less?” Fine. This is what you want. Remove from heat and stop cooking. I prefer to drain them into a colander filled with ice, then cover them with plenty of ice and then sprinkle with water. In truth, you can skip ice and still be fine, but you’d be better off running your ice maker through it and you want it to be great and not just normal.
You now have options. Assuming you’ve blanched two pounds of green beans, you can put them in a Foodsaver bag (when they’re completely cool) and eat them for a couple of weeks. But assuming you’re hungry now and wants to fix the mistakes of the green beans of the past, here’s how to proceed.
Take a portion for two, which I will call “the handful of the righteous.” The second step to good green beans is dry green beans, so place your righteous handful on a folded paper towel. Cover them with another folded paper towel and press down. Then press again after a few minutes. Keep doing this.
While they are dehydrated, you will have to do what you are almost certainly afraid to do: you heat a fusion pan on your stove. (I was also told that the broiler oven will do what comes next, and if that describes your setup, then that’s good for you. My broiler is similar to cooking with a Bic lighter, but feel free if you feel like you have there are required BTUs.)
Place the skillet on the stove with a very thin layer of high-temperature oil (such as a teaspoon of vegetable oil, canola oil, or peanut butter; definitely not olive oil) over high heat. Ideally, this frying pan consists of three-layer stainless steel, because it has the highest conductivity and lowest emissions, that is, it will char on the outside as much as possible with the least amount of cooking on the inside. (For all cast iron talkers, this will work well too; the difference is pretty small in the end.) If you’ve never moved the scale on your stove higher than “5”, now is the time. If it gets to ten, turn it to at least eight! It will scare you, but nothing soothes fear like good green beans. You want the oil to smoke slightly: definitely not strong, but you also don’t settle for the “shimmery”.
Place them in a saucepan. Do it in one swift motion. I regret to say that it is impossible not to be shocked by the strong hissing sound that the frying pan makes (especially if you are using stainless steel). From here, resist the urge to become too chef: my impulse, being an idiot, is to throw-throw-throw things like I’m working on the line at fucking Per Se. Not only are we not working with industrial triple burners, but throwing the beans leads to two (bad) things: limiting the time each side of each grain stays in the hot pan, reducing charring, and increasing the risk of small pot fires. (Another way to prevent the pan from catching lightly is to make sure the beans are very dry, and reduce the heat if they get too smoky.) If the pan has a little fire, don’t worry, just turn off the heat and let cool.
Better to leave the beans alone for at least a minute. After that, use tongs to flip them over so the other side can get into the hellish hot frying pan. This will take four, maybe five minutes (depending on heat and pan material). A good indicator is sound: when the hiss of driven off moisture has mostly subsided, they are almost done. Now is the time to get the chef toss in the beans to make sure they are evenly greasy and (mostly) evenly burnt. Remove them immediately and place them on a paper towel lined plate.
You will notice that I never mentioned seasoning, and this is because trying to do it while cooking is stupid. Instead, season them when removed from heat with plenty of salt and pepper. That’s more than enough, but if you’re looking to boost them up, try Trader Joe’s good all-but-bagel seasoning that you’ve wisely poured into the pepper mill.
These green beans are something you didn’t even know about as a kid. You have different textures – the smallest are three-quarters of the way to burn, while the larger ones are beautifully charred while remaining deliciously soft-crunchy on the inside. They’re enough to make you appreciate a long-underestimated vegetable, and perhaps enough to make you want to take a trip back in time for you to intervene on your mom’s side.
Blanched charred green beans (about eight pieces)
Ingredients
- 2 lb. green beans
- 2 tablespoons of high smoke point oil, such as canola
- Choice of seasoning to taste
instructions
Pour three-quarters of the water into a large saucepan and bring to a boil. After boiling, blanch for two to three minutes, until it turns bright green and still slightly firm to the touch. Remove the beans from the pot, place or drain in a colander filled with ice, cover with more ice, and then rinse with running water to room temperature.
Transfer a serving for two (a large handful or approximately eight ounces) to a stack of paper towels and cover again to dry. The rest can be drained off and stored for later, or cooked in future batches.
Meanwhile, get a very thin layer of oil heating in a stainless steel or cast iron skillet over high heat. Change the paper towels as needed until the green beans are more or less dry to the touch.
When the oil is slightly smoky, gently (but firmly) place the beans in the pan, shaking very gently to ensure that the oil is evenly coated and has equal access to the pan. Let them burn for one minute, then use tongs to periodically move and flip the green beans around the skillet to brown on all sides.
After four or five minutes (or when the hissing sound dies down) toss them up a few times to touch up any exposed areas, then remove them from the pan. Season to taste and serve immediately. When cooking multiple batches, you can keep them in the oven at a very low temperature for about as long as it takes to reset and cook another batch.