Crunchy French-Style Green Beans Recipe
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How can such a simple recipe with so few ingredients cook up so delicious!? And it's even a vegetable! Must be the bacon drippings or duck fat.
Course: , , ,
Dinner
Lunch
Side Dish
Vegetable
Cuisine: ,
American
French
Makes:
Servings: servings
Takes:
Ingredients
- 1 pound fresh green beans
- 2 tablespoons fresh duck fat or bacon drippings
- ¼ cup Seasoned Bread Crumbs or unseasoned bread crumbs
- salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
Notes:
About the fat. Butter will work if you don't have duck fat or bacon drippings, but it's not the same.
About the bread crumbs. You can use seasoned bread crumbs if you wish.
Optional. Add about 1/4 pound cured ham such as prosciutto, pancetta, or jamon.
Optional. Just before serving, sprinkle generously with Parmesan or Romano cheese after you plate it, or serve the cheese on the side and let your guests sprinkle it on their plates.
Metric conversion:
These recipes were created in US Customary measurements and the conversion to metric is being done by calculations. They should be accurate, but it is possible there could be an error. If you find one, please let us know in the comments at the bottom of the page
Method
- Prep. Snap off the stem ends of the beans.
- Boil a large pot of water, about 4 quarts (3.8 l). Fill a bowl about the same size with ice water and set it aside.
- Cook. When the water is boiling briskly, boil the beans for about 3 minutes. Do not cook them all the way through. This is called blanching. Drain them in a colander and plunge them into the ice water. This is called shocking and it helps preserve the bright green color. Drain and pat as dry as possible with paper towels. You can do this a day or two in advance.
- Heat the fat over a medium-high flame in a frying pan. Add the beans and toss them around so they brown a bit on all sides, but don't let them scorch. This should take about 5 minutes.
- Turn the heat down to medium and add the bread crumbs. Toss until they coat the beans and let them toast.
- Turn the heat down to low.
- Serve. Add salt and pepper to taste then plate before serving. Don't waste any of the bread crumbs that fell off the beans into the pan; sprinkle them over the beans.