Green Bean Almondine started as a joke between JoAnn Kerbawy (one of my closest friends in the world) and me when I lived in Miami. We wanted to start a tradition of healthy food that was good and good for you. We joked that our recipe would go viral and spread across the US and then the world. She always made it, so I never really learned how to. My Mom taught me how to cook, but she never made them this way either.
I thought Thanksgiving 2017 would be the perfect time to resurrect our recipe for Green Bean Almondine. Over the weekend, I called her and she told me over the phone how she makes it. I then looked up a few recipes on the Internet. I also called Britten Rogich Lawrence (another good friend who trained at the Le Cordon Bleu in London, United Kingdom) and got her take. So I combined them all and came up with the below recipe.
Green Bean Almondine
Recipe
Feeds 10 people (hungry)
Ingredients
- 2 lbs Green Beans RAW/Fresh (not canned or frozen)
- 1 Small bag Almonds, slivered
- 1 Tablespoon (Olive or Vegetable) Oil
- 1 Tablespoon Butter
- 1 Tablespoon Salt
- 1 TEAspoon Pepper
- 1 Lemon
Directions
Rinse Beans and lightly scrub with brush to remove dirt. Cut ends off. Don’t cut in half, leave long.
In steamer, add 1 Tablespoon salt and enough water to just NOT touch the bottom of top half of steamer (the part with all the holes). This is usually like 1-2 inches of water. Heat until water boils. Add beans to top half of steamer and cover with lid. Cook until al dente/can just put a fork thru – approximately 6 minutes. Depending on size of steamer, you may have to do half of beans and then do other half.
Make an ice bath by filling separate large bowl with ice and water. After cooking beans to al dente, pour them into ice bath so they stop cooking and turn bright green. Allow to chill for 2 minutes, remove from ice bath and put in a separate bowl and set aside. Make sure they are drained well. You don’t want soggy beans!
Heat Oil, Butter, Salt and Pepper in small sauce pan over low heat. Stir well until melted. Remove from heat and set aside.
Cover a cookie sheet with aluminum foil and lightly spray it with oil or non-stick spray. Spread almonds on cookie sheet and place under broiler to lightly toast. WARNING: Watch them VERY closely. They will burn easily very quickly. Remove from heat and sprinkle with a little salt.
Add HALF of butter/oil mixture and HALF of almonds to beans. Use tongs to make sure they coat evenly. You don’t want them to be soggy/swimming in oil. Set aside other half of almonds to garnish with. Add other half of butter/oil mixture to beans and stir to make sure they are all coated well with the butter/oil mixture. Cover with aluminum foil.
When closer to serving time, put remaining almonds in a stripe across top and heat in oven until beans are hot.
At table, sprinkle with fresh cracked pepper and salt and squeeze of lemon just BEFORE serving.
If you feel brave, Add this to your Green Bean Almondine
- Fresh Thyme
( 2 Tbls) 1 small Handful. Wash, Dry, remove leaves from stems, chop, add to beans at end. - Garlic, 3 cloves, smash, peel skin and finely chop or pulverize into paste.
( Add when beans are almost done sautéing, then, add Fresh Thyme)
My Green Bean Almondine was a HUGE success! I told everyone this was my first time making it and asked for constructive feedback, but they had nothing to suggest to make it better. I originally made it with 3 lbs of beans and was too much for 12 hungry people, but I would rather have too much than not enough. That is why I reduced the above recipe to 2 lbs.
The below picture is after everyone ate the Green Bean Almondine. I forgot to take a picture when it was perfect/untouched. Chad is NOTORIOUS for cleaning up IMMEDIATELY after eating – as in NOW! By the time I remembered to take a picture of the end product, he had already put the leftovers in Tupperware.
I don’t own a steamer, so I had to borrowed my upstairs, 83-year-old neighbor’s. However, I do own a slow cooker (T-FAL 10 in 1 Rice and Multicooker) and just now realized it does have a steamer add-on. It is probably in the box in my storage unit. My next post is about I used my slow cooker to make a chocolate cake that people go CRAZY over!
I usually forget to take photos at events I go to. I think it is because I’m having so much fun, I don’t want to stop the fun and take a photo. There were about 12 of us at Thanksgiving Dinner. Here is a photo of a few of us.
Hope you had a great Thanksgiving. I sure did. I have so much to be grateful for. Let me know if you have any suggestions/variations for my recipe for Green Bean Almondine. This is a work in progress, but I’m very happy with my first attempt. 🙂
Thank you to JoAnn Kerbawy and Britten Rogich Lawrence for your valuable input and being such good friends – all these years! Thank you to Kim and Chad “Elvis” Lodato for inviting me to Thankgiving Dinner (and all the other times you fed me) with your family. Chad is hard-core Italian and an excellent cook. I totally respect that he can be a guy AND a good cook.
Be sure to subscribe to my blog for my next post about how my T-Fal slow cooker makes a chocolate cake while we eat. People go CRAZY over it!
Click thru to see my other recipes that are healthy and easy to prepare.
