Oven Baked Garlic Green Beans Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why do you blanch green beans before roasting? ›

Blanching green beans softens them while retaining a crisp-tender texture and bright green color. Blanch green beans before sautéing, roasting, or freezing.

Should I Soak Green Beans Before Cooking? Fresh green beans do not need to be soaked. To help tenderize the beans, blanch them in a large pot of salted water.

You want to avoid overcooking green beans, but you also don't want to undercook them, or as most commonly happens, overcook the outside while the inside remains tough and kind of stringy. One solution is to quickly boil the green beans in salted water, also known as blanching.

Some people (especially food service establishments relying upon your satisfaction) add an alkaline ingredient, such as baking soda, to the cooking water to help retain the color of green vegetables.

Your Beans Will Cook Faster

Well, creating an alkaline (or basic) environment by adding a small amount (about 1 teaspoon per cup of dry beans) of baking soda to your soaking/cooking water can actually help your beans cook faster.

If you freeze green beans without blanching them first, the texture, color, and taste won't be quite as fresh when you defrost and eat them after long-term storage. They'll be good for a couple of months in the freezer, but quickly go downhill thereafter.

If your green beans are tough after roasting it most likely means one of two things. Either the green beans you used were a bit too mature and tough (this method is best with slender green beans, especially haricots verts, or French green beans) or you didn't cook them long enough.

How long do you blanch green beans? Blanch green beans until they are tender-crisp and the bright green color is set. This usually takes about 3 to 5 minutes as long as your pot of water is at a rapid boil when they go in.

"If you rinse your beans thoroughly, you will have a consistently flavored product, but if you do not rinse them, different amounts of salt will remain in the dish each time you cook it, and it will be hard to cook consistently," he says.

Beans should not be soaked for longer than 12 hours.

Some say that beans should be only be soaked for 4 hours, but 12 hours is the upper limit. If you soak the beans for longer than 12 hours, you run the risk of the beans losing both their characteristic flavor and texture.

What to do before cooking green beans? ›

First, wash and trim the beans.

Rinse them in a colander under cool running water, and snap off the stems. While you work, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Set a large bowl of ice water nearby.

A little butter, minced garlic, and lemon-pepper seasoning are all you need to bring the best out of fresh green beans.

Honey + Grainy Mustard. For a flavorful side dish with a classy twist, blanch the green beans and, when they're still hot, toss them with your favorite honey and a spoonful of grainy mustard.

Don't overcook them!

Nothing is worse than a mushy, overcooked green bean. Crisp and slightly tender beans is the goal. To achieve this, taste a bean or two during the cooking process. If it is too crispy for you, keep cooking, testing another green bean in a minute or two.

To make the salad, blanch the beans by plunging them in boiling salted water for 1½ minutes until their rawness has been removed but they are still crunchy. Refresh immediately in cold water, then remove and put onto kitchen paper to absorb the moisture.

Steaming green beans gives them the same crisp-tender texture as blanching or boiling. Yet I think it preserves their lovely green color and allows the home cook more control over their texture than with those other two methods. Steaming is easy, too—and ease is what this recipe is all about.

Put a pan of salted water on to boil. Meanwhile, trim the the beans. Once the water is boiling, steam or boil the beans until tender. Drain well, then tip the cooked beans into the bowl with your dressing and toss everything together, making sure all the beans get coated.

The key to the best beans is to master how long to boil green beans. Cook the green beans, covered, in a small amount of boiling salted water until crisp-tender: 10 to 15 minutes for whole or cut green beans. 5 to 10 minutes for french-cut green beans.