And virtually no where I lived, worked or ate in the Southern US from an arc from Southern Maryland to Lousiana, including Tennessee, did I ever see garlic or onions in those portions. Tomatoes might be used, but only in late summer when the tomatoes were in season. Sometimes the beans will be so dark green they're nearly black. Also, canned green beans (home canned are almost always made this way.
side meat and turnip greens o so sweet, what a treat i love green beans and bacon and i will 100% try this as everything you share with us is a treat too good to beat thank you for shearing with us all
I remember when you posted this... I made them the next day. And 6 years later, they're still the best green beans I've ever eaten! A family staple now. Everyone asks me to make them! Thanks chef John!
My Grandma, a southern Belle, cooked green beans this way and all of us loved them. God called her up two years ago and seeing this video brings back some very nice memories...
There's also green been casseroles, my family is Norwegian and Scottish living in the western US and those are pretty much the only 2 ways we eat them (plus home canned ones).
I come from north China, where ppl eat similarly as ppl in the south. We also make this green bean stew very often( except we do not use tomato product, and instead, we add soy sauce for more taste). We normally serve this over white rice or hand made noodle (not pasta). Anyways, this is one of my best memories from childhood!
+C_ Farther Use any meat you want and replace onion with minced garlic. Instead of tomato sauce, use soy sauce. The rest is exactly the same. Also, do not add any salt until its fully cooked. Depending on the brand of soy sauce, sometimes you may not even need to add any extra salt. Slow cooker is perfectly fine, but you still need to sauté the meat and garlic/onion for flavour. Also, when cooking with slow cooker, reduce liquid added by about half, since there is almost no evaporation.
traditionally in the south, half runner green beans are used. They have large pods which are almost like dry beans with a buttery taste. This is good too, but nowhere near as good as the real thing.
Hello, Michael here from Cyprus. I tried them today and they were absolutely delicious! i wanted to take a photo of the dish but it took me so much time to do (mostly cooking them) that when they were done we dug right into them without hesitation! haha! Awesome dish! I love everything about it! Soft and full of taste! Thank you for the recipe! Cheers from Cyprus
Being from the South, we never added tomato. Usually used bacon or ham hock when available, and occasionally some potatoes. It really depended on what was available when we fixed them. But yeah, nothing like beans that have been cooked for two hours with pork products! Love them!!
@@warrencarnright3747 I just love new potatoes fresh from the ground. I wash them rub oil on them and bake them. Then eat them just as is, no butter. They are small and packed with flavor.
I’m from the south but we don’t use bacon as that was pretty expensive. We use some fat back instead. I will say if you want a vegetarian alternative use some Spanish olive oil.
Made this delish recipe three times, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. Loved it. After the usual two hours I drained the liquid, reduced it to gravy consistency, and recombined it with the beans and served over steamed rice. Transcendently delicious. Thank you! Ming
I've watched your videos for almost two years now, and I can honestly say now that you've taught me a lot about cooking. Maybe not quickly within 2-3 videos... but after watching you for a long time, I built up a lot of what seems like useless information about food and I'm able to use it almost everyday in the kitchen. My hat's off to you, Chef John! Ive even grown a love for cayenne myself. :D
Not being a slave to conventional wisdom... That, Chef John, is wisdom in itself! Love it when a good plan comes together... as Hannibal from the A Team always said.
Chef John, my husband and I made this tonight and followed your recipe exactly. Oh, except we substituted water for chicken broth. It turned out awesome - very, very flavorful. I think when we make this again we might add some potatoes as a few other people have suggested. Thanks so much for this video and all your other vids as well - you explain things so clearly and you're really entertaining and funny to boot:)
Thank You for posting this. Mom, (RIP) was a southern girl, made green beans almost exactly as this. Dad liked gardening each summer we had a ton o' green beans so this became a staple with dinner. Often served along side of a slice of country ham or just hamburgers and mashed potatoes. Simple peasant food but SO good!!! Starting with a bit of bacon or ham, the onions, beans, a wee bit of chicken stock/water would simmer for several hours. Little more than salt/pepper for seasoning. Occasionally added a bit of med. diced red potatoes but not really needed. Never the tomato as you suggested. I think this might upset the simple but tasty umami flavor. By itself the resulting broth on buttered bread or toast is a taste treat. Simple but yummy!! Now that the green beans are in season, think I need to make a pot tomorrow.
Tried this and it was delicious, as is with all of your other recipes that I have tried. Your videos have taught me to cook, or at least help me bring forth my inner chef. Thanks Chef John!
I grew up in the '50's. My grandmother and mother made this. They also used various kinds of meat. The ones I clearly remember are with bacon and/or ground beef (you could also use ground turkey for low fat and add some olive oil). Now, the one thing they added was cut potatoes, the last 20-30 minutes. I'm making it now, with green beans from my garden.. can't wait.
This is the best way to cook and enjoy green beans! I was raised on them cooked and prepared this way (except without tomato sauce,) Family roots from Kentucky and country cookin' has been and will always be some of the best food you will ever eat. Don't like the fat? Don't make them or just have every once in awhile. Cooked this way is heaven!
These are the best green beans you will ever eat & make. I've been cooking these for many years, thanks Chef John! They are hardy enough for a meal by themselves or a great addition to any meal.
This is interesting. I'm from the south but my family has never made green beans this way. Throw in a ham hock and some finely chopped onions, a little salt and some pepper and let it cook for a few hours. Your recipe looks good too!
im from the south too and never ever put tomatoes or garlic or ceyanne pepper in my beans .. but i might try it.. i don't know I like my beans and cornbread the old fashioned southern way.
This recipe is great. As a southerner, I make this all the time. I use the green beans that went a little too long on the vine that aren't as tender. Great way to use them as it makes them really soft and succulent. Sprig of rosemary gives a bit more too it too.
Being a Southerner I've never heard tale of using tomato in cooking green beans ( must be a yankee thing, LOL) but this looks quite yummy. Definitely worth trying. Unless I'm doing a stir fry I hate my green beans brite green and crunchy . Cooked to death in pork of some type is the only way, LOL.
I'm with you. I gave the "Side Eye" when he put tomato in it but, oh well. Actually, I don't use garlic in mine, either. Simple things ;-) Pork, onion, butter, salt, water and a whole bunch of green beans cooked "to death" until almost all of the liquid is gone.
Losttoanyreason , yeah I scratched my head on that one too. All of my grandmas are/were from eastern Kentucky and none of them ever used anything but hammock and bacon grease...oh, the beans were half-runners, which are superior to what chef John is using
Me neither heard of onions in collards but never in string beans. As for the tomato stuff to each it's own. But mine is Smoked ham hocks boiled until almost ready to fall apart then clean string beans with small pieces of potato salt and pepper and hot sauce and let it cook until just a little pot likker.
Thank you thank you, I have been looking for this recipe for 30 years. I tried this recipe for the first time back in the 90s. It was far and away the best green beans I've ever eaten. Just in time for thanksgiving.
💚💚This is just what I was looking for. I just harvested a big bunch of green beans from my garden. I can see from your page we have similar tastes. I love to cook and make RU-vid videos like your I hope we can learn more from each other. Thank you for your inspiration for tonight’s dinner!
I was 19 years old before I ever found out that there was any other way to eat green beans other than cooked to ridiculously tender, and whenever I had cooking jobs overseas they wouldn't let me cook veggies because I naturally overcooked most of them.
FINALLY someone other than Paula Deen knows how to cook southern style. We from the south, do not as a rule, eat green beans that have been dunked in boiling water and shocked with ice water. now, sometimes we are forced to (at business dinners and such) these look so good. you go Chef John.
Neat-o! I'm in Paris, France and have worked as a chef's assistant here (hard work!). One would think I'm this culinary genius and I'm not bad but this guy has got me doing stuff which wasn't even my specialty, and I usually get a laugh out of the clips, too! Watching him and trying some stuff raises the barre for us! :)
In the Middle East especially in Iraq our lunch is basically tomato-based stews with rice. We also make a similar stew such as this however with beef cut in cubes (rarely chicken), and we cut the beans into smaller pieces. I love to have it with raw onion or some other raw vegetables on the side. Yam!
Funny you said that. Most people in the south break the green beans into smaller 1/3rds , leaving them whole is not even easy to eat. Some people sprinkle raw onion on top too.
I made this last night and it was very very good. I used applewood smoked bacon and the flavor.... need I say more it's applewood smoked bacon! This is definitely a keeper and I just might make it again for thanksgiving. Thanks for sharing!!
Green beans were always a staple in the house when I was growing up. You see my parents were from the mountains of NC. Almost every meal in the mountains, no matter how rich or poor people were. The most common method was using good fatback or if it was special occasion, some fatty portions of sugar cured ham, (the American Prosciutto). DO NOT USE SALT CURED HAMS. The cook would let the meat "sweat" as was described to me- to produce some of the oils. Then an appropriate amount of home canned beans, preferably White Half-Runners, jar un-drained, were placed in the pot, and the pot was put on a low-medium heat until the beans turned a very dark green and all the water is gone. No salt needed to be added, only some pepper. The hardest thing for me to do is figure out how to stir without breaking up the beans. Some times corn was added, or caramelized onions or more commonly boiled potatoes near the end. I've had this cooled on a open fire, a wood fireplace, a wood stove all the way to an electric stove, this is one of those OLD dishes, at least in the Americas.
spot on with the white half runners. The beans are best for this, with the larger white seed which becomes soft and almost "butter/creamy" like. Using long california and asian varieties is good I'm sure, but not as good as half runners. Snap them into 1/3rd's as well, leaving them long will make it hard to stir. Water to the top of the beans and let a low heat cook all the water away, people leave so much water in there with some of these recipes. All that will do is turn soft beans super soggy.
Crazy question lol, i never heard of white half runners and i grew up on the crystal coast by way of texas, still here. Are they like big limas beans my mom called "butterbeans"?
no, nothing like that. It's a standard green bean, white half runners the seeds are just larger and have a buttery / potato flavor to them. The beans can be as large as a smaller navy bean, they're delicious. I think they are the most common in the Virginia region.
Finally. Being a dumb ol hick from Alabama I'm so glad you made a video using terminology I can understand. Don't know where you got them fancy cooking words to measure stuff but handful is universal. The bigger your hand the more you put in because the more you're probably going to eat. So, bless your heart.
I have to try making them with the tomato product and cayenne...other than that, exactly like moms! Loved having a grandma from the south. Thanks to her my mama and her sisters (and my generation too) are wonderful cooks!! I could live on this dish!
@@msbernie1970 OH! OK.....How long did that take to cook the ham hocks? so then we'd still benefit from the marrow or whatever from the bones, & all that flavor, right? just no bones or unmelted cartilage. That'd work with pinto beans too, right?? THANKS!
@@susanfurnish4132 yes, it would work for pinto beans too. She would cook the ham hocks for about an hour or so, just enough to get the meat tender enough to easily release the bones and cartilage. You could also just cook the hocks with the beans from the beginning. When the beans are done, take the ham hock out and cut it up and remove the bone, add the meat back to the pot. I usually cook the hock first. I also do this when I'm making collard greens or black-eyed peas.
i honesty don't know why anybody uses canned green beans anymore. you can get fresh year round now. they taste so much better, they take 10 minutes to cook. You can do stuff like this with them. I stopped buying canned soup years ago, My canned vegetables are limited to when I need them in recipes.
YES! I only like them fresh when in season and from the Farmers Stand) and I mostly use frozen now...just less handling and ONLY organic! People from the deep South have always used tomatoes up in various ways when their gardens were abundant and needed to use them up
I never cooked before, and my soon to be girlfriend's birthday was yesterday and I cooked for her. I used this recipe and a few others to make her green beans Mac and cheese fried chicken and rice. She loved it, at the end she gave me a kiss. This was really easy and thank you for recipe. I ll subscribe immediately
I'm from the south and never heard of using tomato sauce in green beans but otherwise everything else sounds right. I make mine the exact same way, using beef broth instead. Thinking back, I think I tried green beans made this way in a restaurant using tomato sauce and didn't care for the taste. I was in the Midwest at the time.
+Lizzie We make them like this in some parts of New Orleans. When we add tomato product, we call them Creole Green Beans. Still, I never cooked them until watching this Video. #iLoveEm
504Diva When I briefly lived in the Midwest, I was invited to a Thanksgiving dinner once. The first thing I ran to get were the green beans.....that's how much I love these little devils. I gulped a whole bunch down and almost threw up. I looked across the table and one guy had the same look on his face. I was too modest to ask what the hell did we have here but he did. Turns out, the woman who brought them, was from Iowa and said it was popular in Iowa to cook green beans using vinegar and brown sugar. All I can say is, I'm a little more cautious with heading for green beans these days.....lol. I didn't realize there were so many ways to cook them. I was only familiar with southern style. But hey....You live and learn!
+Lizzie Beth I had a similar experience with what I thought were potatoes. Turned out to be cauliflower which I had never heard of at the time. I had to ask why the potatoes tasted like broccoli which I also hate. I've never heard of using tomato anything with green beans but I'm gonna try this!
Well done Chef John! My mom would have loved this one. She grew up on a farm. She never made fancy, complicated dishes. That said, she was an amazing cook!
My grandma used to make a very similar dish. She added some bell pepper and ribs and served it with rice. The beans soak up the awesome flavour of the sauce and get really tender. Totally delicious, indeed . It was my favourite dish back then, but I haven't thought about making it myself since she passed away. Now I can't wait to try it again :))
+Chantel Cecilia My grandparents did this with salt pork that was first fried crispy. Also, I most commonly saw this cooked together with peeled, halved russet potatoes.
Biff Dinkley I guess I should have asked if their was a substitue for pork. I eat pork, but not everybody does so I really wanted to know if you could use something like Salted Cod or something.
+Chantel Cecilia I use roasted turkey. It doesn't matter what part of the turkey you use. However, make sure the turkey is roasted. The flavor is amazing. Oh, remember to boil the roasted turkey for about an hour or until it's fork tender :)
This is also excellent served over rice. I make this recipe in the crock pot on low before work and when I get home put some rice in the rice cooker. Easiest meal I make but the taste is amazing. I put in two ham hocks and that covers the meat part of the dish for me. I also add red pepper flake for spice. You're right. The south knows how to eat! lol Good video, Chef.
Thanks Chef John, I made this- and I highly recommend it too. Added some paprika. The stocky juice is just divine by the end of the cooking process. The beans don't end up mushy. There is bite to them despite the cook time (didn't move them much once in the pot, sometimes just dunked the beans down into the stock).
Memories of Sunday dinners with green beans from the garden baked chicken black eyed peas and rice. Momma cut her beans diagonally. No tomato onion or garlic though, just a ham hock and salt...cooked for hours lol. And i don't dare eat like that anymore. Still...Thanks for the memories!
I heart you, Chef John. This recipe and your commentary at the end made me a subscriber. I love crunchy stir-fried green beans, and medium steak as well but these green beans are LIFE. The fat and cholesterol are soothing to the soul sometimes. Thank you for not being a slave to convention. 💙💙
My mom, who was from Texas, made these on the regular, she also did a very similar dish with okra instead of the green beans. I think I’ll make some just for old time’s sake. Thanks, CJ!
Had to come back and thank you for this awesome recipe! I gave it a little Mexican flare added cumin oregano and 2 serranos and everyone loved it!!! I did also add potatoes, I can't wait to make them again 🍽️
I'm really happy that Chef John is so happy about these "slow cooked" beans when the fact is those barely cooked GOURMET green beans are not the norm. But goodness why are these string beans, which is their name, not snapped into their bite-sized pieces You don't just cut off the ends and throw them in a pot. You SNAP off the root end then SNAP them for 3-5 pieces down the length of the bean. And while bacon may be okay, TRADITIONALLY, you cook them with a ham hock.
My hillbilly mom made these 40 plus years ago. She cooked them real low in the oven in her old enamel roaster. Gee, I miss my mom,gee I miss those green beans,gee these look great. Damn it, I'm making these. Thanks for posting.
My favourite meal , A very popular dish in the Vosges county in France , we don't add water but a beef tomato in it and little water , either way , it's delicious . Thank you !
I'm from Ohio and these were a summer staple, minus the tomato sauce, that is. Mom would usually put some cut up potatoes in and depending on what we had available, she would use either cubed up ham or bacon. When she served it on the table we would cut up fresh cold tomatoes from our garden. Yum! Now I'm the one who cooks the beans but the tomatoes are from a produce stand as I don't have a garden. The beans are just as good as I remember...
My mom and dad grew up in Viola, WI, a small farming community. She is of French/English stock and dad is from German/English heritage. And we would have these beans every Sunday only mom cooked them with ham hocks. (Funny even tho we are true Northerners we ate like Southerns...why am I reading this with a Southern accent?)
I've made this twice since seeing this recipe. Living 45 minutes from Vidalia, Ga, I highly suggest getting sweet onions as authentic as you can-it makes a huge difference. Enjoy guys!
I am Lebanese we have the same dish minus the bacon of course. And another variation is a stew with added meat served with rice. They both are very good
I'm from Texas, and I had no idea that green beans were made any other way or were supposed to be bright green and have crunch to them until I was an adult! This is still my favorite way to have them!
