The Search for Tender Green Beans

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Ever since I tried to make green beans in a sheet pan meal, I have meant to get back to them. I still haven’t been very successful in getting them to cook on a sheet pan, but I keep tweaking the method, hopefully. I know that for many people, a chewy green bean is ok. I’m a little weird because I want them to be fully tender, but not mushy and still bright green. I know… You can’t always get what you want – but I can try. 
I grew up on canned green beans. They were a bit mushy and usually a grey green color. I bought a can to feed to my grandson. They seemed the right consistency for someone who doesn’t have molars yet. He was un-interested and after tasting them I had to admit he had a point. 
I remember my sister saying that you had to cook green beans for a long time to get the can flavor out of them. This makes sense. You have to get the can flavor out and put something else in. When I was a child it was usually bacon or salt pork. Once my mother started learning to cook with less fat, she would flavor the broth with beef bouillon cubes and granulated garlic. I remember them as yummy, if a bit grey and mushy. 
But I have been trying to perfect fresh beans, not boiled, and tender to the bite.
Here is one recipe on my website. Roasted Green Beans This combines the microwave and roasting, with a marinade in-between. The key here is to fully cook the beans in the microwave, because they don’t really get tender without wet heat. 
Here is another way that starts with the steamer or microwave and completes the cooking/flavoring step in a skillet. Tom’s Green Beans
In both of these cases, tender French Beans are the best bet. When we were living in North Carolina, we had access to Half-Runner beans. These were very flavorful, but really stringy. You had to really work to get them ready to cook because no amount of cooking would tenderize them if you didn’t get the strings out!! 

Today I am cooking the French Beans from Trader Joe’s. I like these because it is a fairly small package and they come in an microwave safe bag. I’m using the Roasted Green Bean method. 
I microwaved them for 5 minutes then poured the hot beans into a zip top with two tablespoons each of Soy Sauce, Worcestershire, lime juice, and a heaping teaspoon of minced garlic from a jar. They sat in the fridge until I was ready for the roasting step, which ended up being about 2 hours. 
I roasted them for about 30 minutes and… Still tough!! No one else complained, but for me, I prefer my green beans to be more tender. These were “Toothy”, meaning they were hard to bite through. So, I’m going to have to do some more work and make a note in the Roasted Green Bean recipe that these tend to be more toothy. 
Stay tuned for the next episode in search of tender green beans!

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