Green Beans and Greens With Fried Shallots Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How to use fried shallots? ›

I use it frequently as a garnish in all things Asian, from soups to salads, poke bowls to curries. Instant crunch and salt! They're also a useful substitute for recipes that call for deep fried onion or similar (like Biryani, Green Bean Casserole).

Butter: A bit of butter adds a rich flavor and helps the seasoning stick to the green beans. Seasoned salt: Buy seasoned salt from the store, or make your own seasoned salt at home. Chili powder: This is an unexpected knockout seasoning. Chili powder adds a touch of spice and color without being too overpowering.

Here's a secret you may not know: You don't actually have to soak your beans at all. Just add them to your pot and plan on cooking your recipe for another hour or two beyond the usual cooking time. Keep an eye on the level of liquid, adding more water, broth or stock if the pot looks dry.

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.

Because baking soda lessens the acidity of the cooking water, it also slows down the chlorophyll dulling process, thereby keeping the veggies greener for longer.

To bring out their best flavor — and mellow out their acidity — soak them in cold water after slicing. You can also place the slices in a colander so you can rinse them under running water. The water removes the bitterness inherent to alliums by dispersing the sulfuric compounds that cause it.

Their milder quality makes them easier to eat in this state than other onions. When cooked, shallots have a melt-in-your-mouth quality and obtain a rich, caramel-like flavor, providing a key component to traditional sauces like Beurre Blanc.

The fried-shallot master who taught me how to make them always described the ideal thickness as "two credit cards pressed together." If you slice the shallots any thinner than that, they'll brown too quickly, before the water in them has been driven out and replaced by oil, resulting in a soggy, oily product.

Then, I toss the blanched beans with olive oil, lemon juice and zest, garlic, and salt to pep up their flavor. Serve them just like that, or dress them up more with toasted almonds or pine nuts, grated Parmesan cheese, red pepper flakes, or fresh herbs like basil, parsley, or thyme.

On the other hand, green beans cooked in unsalted water take longer to cook and come out bland and dull. Here's how you can see the science in action: Add ¼ cup of table salt and 1 pound of trimmed green beans to 2 quarts of boiling water. Return the water to a boil, and cook for 6 minutes.

What do green beans do for the body? ›

The vegetable helps fight inflammation and is a good source of folate and potassium, which helps regulate blood pressure. Green beans also are a good source of protein and fiber, which helps lower cholesterol, Vadiveloo said. "Fiber is underconsumed by U.S. adults and children, and it's good for gut health," she said.

Fresh green beans in good condition will feel firm and should snap apart when bent. Older green beans that feel limp and have started to develop a slimy texture are no longer safe to eat. If you see any fuzzy mold on them, they are definitely too bad to eat.

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.

Before cooking, snap off the stem end of the vegetable. Some green beans come with this end already detached. If yours still have it, just snap off the very end of the stem of each bean—a great task for any helping hands in the kitchen.

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.