What combination do you use for your greenbean bake?
- Greenbeans, shortcut or french sliced
- Cream of mushroom soup
- Canned sliced mushrooms
- Sliced waterchestnuts
- French fried onions for topping
What are your variations?
French sliced green beans, because that’s the kind I normally buy. And salted sunflower kernels for the crunch, just because I like them.
A dash of soy sauce? NOT canned green beans, either, must be 90% cooked frozen beans. Otherwise, the recipe needs no variation. Otherwise, it’s not Green Bean Casserole.
Fresh green beans, steamed. Bechamel sauce. Caramelized onions and sauteed mixed mushrooms. A nice dose of good parmesan cheese.
A totally different take on the classic, but it tastes so much better!
Wow, that sounds good. I’d actually eat that!
The others… I think it’s something you have to grow up with to appreciate it, and I didn’t.
Do you have a recipe for this? It sounds great.
Yes - I want that recipe too! Sounds marvelous. Mmm.
Agreed. I don’t do green bean casserole - I find it really rather bland and uninteresting - but I’d totally eat tumbleddown’s version.
Last time I had T-Day at my house, we had green bean almondine instead of the casserole. Fresh steamed green beans, garlic butter, and almonds. Yum!
I like the “real” kind with bechamel and all, but it isn’t “green bean casserole”. Which I make with cream of celery, thank you, because cream of mushroom is ass-nasty.
I get minorly annoyed at the assertion perpetrated by marketing that green bean casserole and Pillsbury cresent rolls are present on every Thanksgiving table in America. Now, I have no problem with either thing, but I’ve had almost 40 Thanksgivings since I was old enough to eat solid food and we’ve never had either thing.
Now, as far as the OP, I’m not a big maker of greenbean casserole, but I’ll take a big scoop at a potluck. Once I was a guest at the home of someone who made it, and it had sliced water chestnuts in it and that was the best version I’ve ever eaten.
Ditch the water chestnuts, add crumbled bacon, saute fresh green beans in the bacon fat with sliced shrooms (I prefer the baby bella, YMMV) top with french’s onions, no sauce necessary. Although a bechamel may be interesting…
This is Alton Brown’s recipe for Green Bean Casserole which is now my default (with a few tweaks here and there). Only eat this if you never want to eat the traditional kind again!
I use Alton’s recipe but saute shallots and use half white mushrooms and half chanterelles. I use the canned onions as well, I prefer the texture.
Why must people mess with perfection? No variation. Follow the recipe on the Durkee Onion can. That’s what it’s there for.
I didn’t know until a few years ago that black people don’t eat green bean casserole. The black ladies I work with approached me en masse one day before Thanksgiving and asked if we really eat that green bean casserole thing, and if so what does it taste like? I had no idea it was divided along racial lines.
I was in my twenties before I ever saw a green bean casserole.
However, I made Cook’s version a few years back and now it is required or much pouting ensues. Except I put the canned fried onions on it - it just ain’t right without those.
This is the first I’ve heard of water chestnuts in green bean casserole, and now I’m wondering why. On thinking about it, they’d be a wonderful addition.
parthenokinesis, it goes without saying that everything’s better with bacon, but most of my formative Thanksgivings were at Gramma’s house, and enough of my relatives are vegetarian that the rule is “If it’s not obviously a meat dish, it doesn’t have meat in it”.
We have this as a main dish. Delete the cream of mushroom soup, replace with creamed corn. Add browned ground beef. Dinner.
We never had this growing up for Thanksgiving dinner. (Broccoli cheese casserole was our ‘fake green’ dish.)*
At one point, I started attending potlucks, etc at work and everyone makes this. I’m learning how to cook, so I made it last year. (I’d never tried it at the potlucks b/c I’m squeamish about eating some people’s cooking–and the fact that it tends to sit on a table all day.) I used the classic recipe and ummmm…no. The bf ate it and said it was fine.
I’ve been thinking that if I could find one with fresh green beans I might like it! Thanks for the link to the recipe!
*Also what I’m working on for this year.
I’d like to recommend perfection + real bacon crumbles.