Beans done right - Mom Style
Re-sharing 'The genius of Gran's green beans"
Okay, I shared this one just over a month ago. But it’s a great maker/cooking tidbit straight from my mom. And with Mother’s Day only a day past, I thought it’d be worth sharing again. Try Gran’s green beans, and you won’t be sorry. Happy Mother’s Day to all those who make everything else possible. ~JRC
The genius of Gran's green beans
Like many things in life, it takes time
First published April 7th, 2023
We grew up in rural Ohio, and gardening was not just a hobby for my parents but a way of life. Growing much of what we ate throughout the year was a particular source of pride for my mom. Fresh corn, vine-ripe tomatoes, pencil-thin green onions, and exceptionally grown green beans were all typical fare for us. We often ate many of these fruits and veggies raw or nearly so - even the green onions. But not the beans, for some reason. These were always slow-cooked with bacon and onion until they were super tender, savory, and oh-so-delicious.
It may surprise many, but I don't recall eating a raw green bean until college. It was in Dr. Snider's "Morphology of Vascular Plants" class while a sophomore at the University of Cincinnati. We were doing a lab on fruits, and Dr. Snider brought in a veritable smorgasbord of edibles for us to dissect and then consume. Eating a raw green bean was the most shocking of all the diversity before us - it was deliciously crunchy and oh-so-sweet - a far cry from the slow-cooked version I was accustomed to.
After eating raw green beans, I rebelled against my mom's preference for preparing them. It seemed almost sacrilege to take something so naturally delicious and instead cook the heck out of it. So after that fateful class, I opted for al dente green beans (if I cooked them at all). Over subsequent years, I made various bean dishes, from simply buttered & salted to elaborately covered in hollandaise, but never cooked beyond the slightest.
It wasn't until the last few years that I returned to appreciating my mom's green beans.
On a visit back to Ohio, when my son was maybe 7 or 8, he remarked how much he loved how my mom - his "Gran" - cooked beans. It made me take pause and reevaluate my prejudice. Indeed, there was something special about them. Prepared in her way, often in a pressure cooker, the green beans morphed from bright and crisp to incredibly savory. Both styles are wonderful, but "Gran's green beans" are full of complex umami flavor the fresh version does not have, a characteristic I failed to appreciate years before.
Indeed, Gran's green beans are exceptional.
To elaborate further, I need to take a sciency sidebar into what "umami" is.
Most of us learned years ago there are four basic taste sensations: sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. It wasn't until the late 20th century that Western cultures began to recognize what a particular Eastern civilization has known for centuries - there is a fifth taste, savory. In Japanese, they call it "umami," which roughly translates as "deliciousness."
Umami is perceived when the amino acid L-glutamate is present in food. It's found naturally in many things we consider savory and delicious - like cured meats (especially bacon). L-glutamate forms, concentrates, or enhances through slow cooking or drying. Meats, fish, and some vegetables such as tomatoes and green veggies can all take on fabulous umami character when prepared as such. Southern-style collard greens are full of umami. And so are Gran's green beans.
The perfect slow-cooked green beans are not simply cooked longer than fresh or lightly cooked ones. Green beans can be horrible if done wrong. Flavorless, mushy, and dull, over-cooked green beans are the stuff of school cafeteria nightmares. These abominations often originate from a can and are heated to make them palatable and kept warm until consumed. But these aren't the same as slow-cooked green beans.
All that umami takes a good while and a couple of umami-enhancing ingredients to develop fully in slow-cooked green beans. Undoubtedly this is why so many people are unfamiliar with them. (Or if they've had a mouthwatering serving of the good kind once and tried to replicate it at home, they have failed.)
It’s counterintuitive to take something as near-perfect as a fresh green bean and cook it for hours.
The uninformed quite understandably stop the cooking process too soon and are left with a mushy mess that no one asks for seconds of. But this isn’t how it’s done. No, Gran's green beans take time to make. So make time, and make them yourself. But do it the right way.
Here's how.
Gran's Green Beans
Ingredients:
fresh green beans, cut into one to two-inch pieces, tips and strings removed
raw yellow onion, quartered and separated
bacon, cut into large strips or chunks
salt
water
The ratio of the above ingredients is debatable. I'd say about a pound of fresh green beans, one small yellow onion, four to five strips of bacon, maybe a teaspoon of salt to start (add more to taste later), and just enough water to cover everything while cooking.
Directions:
Add the bacon and onions to a large pot, cook on medium-high for a couple of minutes, just long enough for the fat to render a bit and the onions to start to soften, then add the beans, salt, and water. Stir and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for one to two hours until reduced. Be sure to add more salt if the beans seem too bland after about 45 minutes - but not sooner. (Salt helps bring out the umami flavor in the end but will partially mask undercooked blandness before.)
You'll know when they're ready when they start to taste so darn good you can't stop tasting them.
One might wonder why the vague time frame of "one to two hours." It does vary, depending on the beans. Fresh beans take a bit longer. Less so for older or less sweet ones. Quality frozen beans work well in a pinch and will take less time. Adding a 1/2 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar can help speed up the cooking process. And, as Gran prefers, you can crank out a delicious batch quickly using a pressure cooker (20 to 30 minutes instead of hours).
I've experimented with adding additional ingredients like a teaspoon or two of Worcestershire sauce or fish sauce (both umami-filled on their own), a good crank of fresh-ground black pepper, and red pepper flakes. Chicken stock is a nice substitute for water. Some Southern-style recipes call for crushed tomatoes or tomato paste. And vegetarians might consider a splash of liquid smoke and parmesan cheese rinds as an alternative to bacon. A pinch of sugar might enhance less-than-homegrown-quality beans.
After experimentation, I think Gran's version is outstanding, just the way it is.
If you remain skeptical, I get it. It took me a long time to come back around and appreciate again Gran's green beans. Fresh green beans are outstanding, after all. (They're among the few raw green veggies my son loves in his school lunch box.) But if you take the time yourself, with an open mind and an empty stomach, I'm sure you'll come to see what my son, I, and many others all know - Gran's green beans are pure genius.
Until next time.
JRC