You can make this recipe with frozen green beans, although you will have a much better result using fresh green beans that you clean and trim yourself. There are wonderful green beans this time of year available at farmers markets around the country.
Growing up working on a produce farm in high school, people would ask my boss how he liked to serve something like green beans: “Boil them in salty water, and cover them in butter.”
If you are ever picking green beans competitively for a living, it helps to gather as many beans in your hands as possible before depositing them into your bucket…the more time you spend moving the beans from your hands to the bucket, the less time you spend picking beans. Over the course of an 8-hour bean picking session, you can really notice the difference.
This recipe includes bacon and parmesan cheese, making these a slightly rich side dish to accompany a hearty meal on a rainy day. Not only is this recipe incredibly delicious, but it’s also fairly easy to prepare.
You can make this side dish into a casserole fairly easily, just mix the cooked bacon with all of the other ingredients in a casserole dish, top with some extra parmesan cheese, and bake at 375F for about 30 minutes, or until the parmesan cheese is golden-brown and the beans are tender.
Green Beans with Bacon Parmesan Sauce
Ingredients
- 4 oz (¼ lb) thick-cut bacon
- 2 tsp vegetable oil
- 2 cloves garlic, finely minced
- 16 oz (1 lb) green beans, cleaned and ends trimmed off
- ¼ cup chicken stock
- ¼ tsp freshly-ground black pepper
- ¼ cup heavy cream
- ½ cup parmesan cheese, finely grated
- Kosher salt, to taste
- ¼ cup fresh parsley, finely chopped
- 2 Tbsp fresh chives, finely sliced, as garnish
- 2 Tbsp parmesan cheese, as garnish
Instructions
- Cut the bacon into lardons, roughly 1/8” thick.
- Cook the bacon lardons in a medium size saute pan with the 2 tsp of vegetable oil until the bacon lardons are crispy.
- Remove the cooked bacon from the pan, and reserve on paper towels.
- *Keep the bacon fat in the pan.
- Add the minced garlic and green beans to the pan, and cook on medium heat for 1 minute.
- Add the chicken stock and freshly-ground black pepper, and steam the green beans in the stock for roughly 4 minutes, or until the beans are cooked, but still bright green.
- Add the heavy cream and parmesan cheese, and stir over low heat for an additional minute to warm up the sauce.
- Add the bacon that you cooked earlier and taste the final mixture.
- Add more Kosher salt and freshly-ground black pepper, if desired.
- Fold the fresh parsley and chives into the green beans with bacon and parmesan.
- Garnish with the fresh chives and another sprinkling of parmesan cheese.