Ina Garten-Inspired Green Bean Casserole
Made from scratch, this dish fails in one predictable way: a thin, greyish sauce that pools at the bottom. The mushrooms did that.
A mushroom is roughly ninety per cent water, and butter added at the start seals the surface so that water leaves slowly, into your sauce. Put them in a dry, hot pan instead. They squeak, then release a surprising amount of liquid, then that liquid boils off and they start to brown. Only then does the butter go in.
The pan looks wrong for about four minutes. Wait it out.
Jump to the recipe ↓Ina Garten-Inspired Green Bean Casserole
Serves 8 · Side
- Prep
- 25 min
- Cook
- 35 min
- Total
- 1 hr
Involved8 steps, 11 ingredients, a technique that commonly fails
~210 kcal per servingestimated
Ingredients
- 900 g green beans, trimmed
- 500 g chestnut mushrooms, sliced
- 4 tbsp butter
- 1 onion, finely diced
- 3 tbsp plain flour
- 400 ml chicken or vegetable stock
- 200 ml double cream
- 2 tsp soy sauce
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 100 g crispy fried onions
Method
- Blanch the beans , then into ice water. Drain and dry.4 minutes
- Brown the mushrooms in a dry pan over high heat until the released water has boiled away and they colour, about.8 minutes
- Add the butter and onion and cook more.5 minutes
- Stir in the flour and cook.2 minutes
- Whisk in the stock, then the cream. Simmer until it coats a spoon.
- Add soy sauce, salt and pepper. Fold the beans through.
- Bake at 200°C for.20 minutes
- Scatter the fried onions on and bake more.10 minutes
Blanch and shock the beans
Beans go into the oven already cooked, so they need to come out of the water while they still have bite — four minutes, then straight into ice water. The cold stops them dead and fixes the colour. Beans cooked through at this stage come out of the bake olive-drab and limp.
The fried onions go on at the end
Ten minutes, not thirty. Scattered on at the start they absorb sauce, soften, and then burn on top — which is why the topping so often manages to be both soggy and scorched at once.
Why soy sauce in a green bean casserole
Not for the flavour of soy, which disappears. It supplies glutamates, the same savoury compounds that make the tinned condensed version oddly moreish. Two teaspoons is the difference between a cream sauce with mushrooms in it and something that tastes like this dish is supposed to taste.
Storing
Assemble without the topping up to two days ahead. Bake from cold with an extra 10 minutes, then add the onions. Leftovers reheat poorly — the beans keep softening.
Questions people ask
Can I use frozen green beans?
Yes, and skip the blanching. Thaw and dry them thoroughly or they water down the sauce.
Can I make it ahead?
Assemble it two days ahead without the fried onions. Those go on for the final ten minutes of baking, whenever that is.
Why is my sauce thin?
Water from the mushrooms. Brown them in a dry pan until it has evaporated.
Can I use tinned soup instead?
You can, but the whole point of making it is that a real béchamel with browned mushrooms tastes of mushrooms.
More like this
Ina Garten-Inspired Beef Bourguignon: Garnish ApartThe onions and mushrooms are cooked separately and added at the end. Simmered in from the start they are what turns it into ordinary stew.
Ina Garten-Inspired Beef Stroganoff: Not Stewing SteakStroganoff is a fast dish and stewing beef needs hours. Use fillet or sirloin, seared in seconds, or it turns grey and tough.
Ina Garten-Inspired Beef Tenderloin: Tuck the TailA whole tenderloin tapers from thick to thin. Fold the narrow end under and tie it, or that end is well done before the middle is warm.