17 Cooking Tips You Should Know For Green Beans

Green beans bring a touch of elegance to any meal. This classic vegetable is a staple of menus across the globe. While it's particularly popular in French cuisine, it has a globe-trotting history, originating in South America before spreading to North America and Europe. Over the years, green beans have remained desirable; they're prized for their taste, texture, and versatility. Today, green beans are as well-liked and sought-after as ever, with a market size of over $31 billion in 2019, according to a report from IndexBox (via Global Trade Magazine).

But although these skinny, vibrant beans appear simple and rustic, cooking them correctly is anything but easy. Sure, you can throw them in a pot and boil them until they're pure mush, but if you want to nail your green beans, it takes a fair bit of finesse to get them just right. Luckily, though, you don't have to be a professional chef to perfect your green beans. All you need is a few easy-to-learn, easy-to-execute tips that you can practice in your kitchen, before wowing your friends with your new-found skills. Let's take a look at everything you need to know about cooking green beans.

You can buy the freshest produce out there. But unless you stored your legumes correctly once you got them home from the store, then you'll quickly find that no amount of clever cooking can bring them back from the brink.

That's why learning to store your green beans properly is essential. The main thing to remember is to try and keep them dry. While washing green beans when you get home from the store might seem like a logical move, doing so may cause them to deteriorate faster, so only wash them just before you cook them.

To keep them extra dry and protected from deterioration, trying to limit their air contact is also useful. For best results, place the beans in a zip-lock bag, and put a few paper towels inside with them, to soak up any excess moisture. Pop them in the vegetable drawer in your fridge, instead of leaving them at room temperature; the colder they are, the longer they'll last.

Canned green beans might seem like the height of convenience. Already cooked and prepared, all you need is a tin opener, and the vegetables inside are pretty much good to go. But what you save in time with canned green beans, you lose in quality — and using them in a recipe can be a huge mistake.

As Charleston chef Mike Anderson says, using canned green beans in recipes like casseroles will produce a poor result. "Canned green beans are already soft and will fall completely apart," Anderson states via Mashed. By the time you pull them out of the oven, you'll be left with a green bean mush.

To avoid this, it's always better to go fresh. "Fresh green beans will have a more firm texture, which is what you want in a casserole," advises Anderson. Despite this, Anderson still suggests that green beans benefit from a little cooking before throwing them into a casserole dish with the other ingredients. Lightly steam your beans until they're tender, but not soft, before adding everything else and baking.

Steaming or boiling green beans is an undemanding way to get one of your five a day. But let's be real: steamed or boiled green beans can be boring. While green beans have a pleasant, nutty, somewhat grassy taste, serving them without any adornments can make for a pretty bland side dish.

Next time you come to prepare green beans, we urge you to consider sautéing them. "I strongly prefer sautéing — this preserves the integrity of the bean, keeps them crisp, and takes very little time," says Chicago chef Charlie McKenna, per Insider. As well as this, McKenna points out that sautéing green beans is a space-saver, especially if you're used to roasting your beans. Moving the preparation from the oven to the countertop gives your oven-bound food more room to breathe.

Additionally, sautéing green beans gives you the ability to add any flavor you choose to jazz them up. Always make sure you blanch your green beans before sautéing, so they don't cook unevenly. It takes around 5 to 7 minutes to sauté green beans over medium heat, using approximately one tablespoon of oil for every 3 to 4 servings.

Air fryers have changed the game. Virtually anything can be made in these handy contraptions, and more often than not, they produce excellent results. That's certainly the case with green beans. Making green beans in an air fryer is an awesome way to create a super-crispy side dish, with the beans cooking through without becoming soft and soggy.

When you combine the beans with other flavors, you can create concoctions that work just as well as a bar snack, as well as next to a slice of quality meat on the dinner table. Try making air fryer parmesan green bean fries next time your friends come over, to seriously impress them. All you have to do is coat trimmed green beans in a combo of panko bread crumbs and grated parmesan — while remembering to dip them into a flour and egg mixture first to help the coating adhere to the vegetable. Then, put them in your air fryer basket, spray them with some cooking oil, and cook for around 6 minutes. Upon removing, the beans will be crispy and flavorful on the outside, but tender on the inside.

Boiling green beans is a one-way ticket to soggy town, folks. While it may be the easiest and quickest way to prepare beans, it's also the one that bears the most risk. Leaving your beans in boiling water just a minute too long will remove all their crispy goodness, and leave you with floppy, chewy vegetables.

For the best results, steam them instead. Steaming doesn't just cook the beans gently, ensuring that they retain their snap and crunch while becoming tender. It also helps them to stay nutritious. "While boiling involves submerging the vegetables completely underwater, therefore causing some nutrients — like vitamin C and B vitamins, as well as antioxidants — to leach out into the water, steaming helps retain more of these nutrients," explains Michelle Dudash, a registered dietitian nutritionist, to Runner's World. You won't be pouring those all-important vitamins away anymore with this method.

Steaming green beans requires little more than a steamer basket, some water, and a few minutes of your time. Put the trimmed beans in your basket, and place them over a pot of boiling water. Cover with a lid, and leave them to steam for approximately 3 to 5 minutes, depending on the thickness of your beans and how cooked you want them. To test them, pull one out (being careful not to burn your hands), and bite through it. If it has a gentle snap with a tender inside, it's done.

Green beans, like other vegetables, can be fickle. One minute, they're perfectly fresh, glowing with a vibrant green color and firm to the touch, and the next, they're ready to be thrown out. Figuring out when green beans are no longer in their prime — and how long they generally last — will save you a lot of embarrassment when serving dinner.

Generally, uncooked green beans will stay fresh for 5 to 7 days in the refrigerator, provided that they're stored correctly and kept dry. Damp beans are likely to go bad quickly and develop mold, creating food risks. After around a week, they'll usually need to be thrown out, as following that they'll start to turn bad.

Limpness is one of the first things to look out for in green beans. Once they lose their firmness, they'll be less pleasant to eat. You can check this easily by taking one of your green beans and bending it slightly. If it's still fresh, the bean won't yield very much and will snap instead. A green bean that's past its prime, though, will have a rubbery texture, bending easily.

Much is made of green beans' crunchy texture. But while this is certainly satisfying, it's entirely possible to have too much of a good thing. One of our top tips for cooking green beans is to learn how to work contrasting textures.

Introducing a creamier element to green beans, either through a casserole-style dish or simply by stirring milk products through to make creamy green beans, is an excellent way to avoid them becoming one-note. Creamy textures soften the beans somewhat and provide not just a textural counterpoint, but a new flavor element too. If you want to keep things simple, fry up some onions and garlic, and then add your green beans, stirring to coat everything before drizzling over some cream, or spooning in some sour cream. Toss everything together, season, and serve.

If you don't have time for that, though, we've got another top tip for you: Simply add a generous pat of butter to your green beans. The creamy fats in the butter will work wonders with the legumes. ‌

Green beans have a slight bulk to them which makes them somewhat satisfying. But there's no denying that as veggies go, they're on the more delicate side of things. No one's under any illusions that, on their own, they don't exactly make the most filling meal.

But when combined with a heartier element like bacon, things can start to look a lot more satisfying, with the protein and fat in the meat making things a lot more satiating. Try cooking some skillet green beans with mushrooms and bacon, by sautéing mushrooms with garlic and spices, adding them to blanched green beans, and topping with crispy bacon.

Aside from the appetite-satisfying benefits that bacon has, it also delivers serious flavor, with the fat and salt coming together to boost the umami factor of the beans. Other cuts of pork, like pancetta or pork belly, also go well with beans. For people who don't eat meat, using smoked tofu or seitan can provide a similar depth of flavor while bulking the beans out. Green beans also go excellently with tofu and other meat substitutes as part of a stir-fry.