It was time for Thanksgiving dinner and I was in charge of the green beans. Lucky for us, a friend shared this recipe for "Crack Green Beans" with me and I'm happy to report that they were all they were cracked up to be. For something that was quick and simple to make they had great flavor. I could have used fresh green beans and blanched and cooked them but I was a bit lazy and used frozen cut green beans. I hope you'll forgive me for using the frozen beans but everything else was from scratch.
Ingredients for this are pretty basic and included the three basic food groups: bacon, butter, and brown sugar. The rest of the ingredients were just there to add color. You're going to want to try this so here's the ingredients list for enough to make one 9x13 baking dish:
- 3 16-ounce bags of frozen cut green beans (thawed)
- 12 slices of bacon
- 2/3 cup of brown sugar
- 1/4 cup of melted butter
- 7 tsp of soy sauce
- 1 1/2 tsp of garlic powder
That's it! Pretty basic ingredients, eh? The fun started with the bacon -- first I cut the slices into 1/2-inch pieces and coked them until nice and crispy and they were turned into giant bacon bits. This step, by the way, was the longest part of the entire preparation process. When the bacon was done, the beans were dumped into a 9x13 bacon dish and leveled out. The garnish was then added. Garnish? What garnish? Why the bacon pieces of course! When you do this step, good luck spreading them around without snitching any. Don't feel too bad, a good chef needs to sample along the way to ensure quality. Who needs parsley flakes when you've got pieces of crisp bacon to put on top?
Next it was time to put together the secret sauce. Actually, it isn't really a secret sauce since I'm telling you the recipe but you get the idea, right? Making the sauce was simple enough that I was able to make it without making any major blunders. Sugar, brown sugar, soy sauce, and garlic powder all went into a sauce pan and were heated and mixed together. Once everything was blended together the sauce was drizzled evenly all over the beans and bacon. That's it! Preparation complete!
I preheated the oven to 350 degrees and the the beans baked for 40 minutes. I heard a chorus of ooooooh's and ahhhhhhhhh's as the beans were served. Thunderous applause resonated through the dining room and the family members all cheered as they took their first bites. Perhaps I exaggerate a little bit but I'm pretty sure that's what everyone was thinking of doing.
Don't get me wrong, these beans were really good. Good enough that even the little kiddos were eating them! This was definitely not your typical green bean casserole - no mushroom gravy and French's fried onions involved. Go ahead and try these, you'll love this break with tradition!
Bon appetit!!
Making these tomorrow - yum!!