Holiday Green Bean Casserole

This homemade green bean casserole recipe is void of any gelatinous canned soups, uses all fresh ingredients, and is sure to be a recurring favorite at all of your future holiday events.

Ingredients for Green Bean Casserole:

1 ½ lbs. Green Beans

4 C. Heavy Cream

16 oz. White Button Mushrooms

2 tbsp. Neutral Oil

¾ C. Flour

8 oz. Bacon

1 ea. Shallot (Mine Weighed 2 oz., Just Get Close)

2 ea. Garlic Cloves (Finely Minced)

1 tbsp. Thyme

1 tsp. Salt

½ tsp. Black Pepper

Crispy Fried Onion Ingredients:

1 ea. Small Onion

2 C. Buttermilk

1 ½ C. Flour

2 tbsp. Salt

Oil for Frying

Method for Green Bean Casserole:

  1. In a large Dutch oven with a lid, bring 1 gallon of water to a rolling boil, then add ¼ c of salt.
  2. While the water heats, clean the ends off your green beans, you can also use this time to rinse them if they have debris or dirt on them.
  3. Once the water is boiling, add your green beans to the pot, cover and cook for 3 minutes. They should still have some bite left to them.
  4. Remove from the water and immediately submerge them in ice water until completely cool.
  5. Dice the bacon into ¼ in pieces. Finely chop your shallots and garlic.
  6. Add 8 oz. of your mushrooms to a food processor and process until very small, about 30-45 seconds. Slice the other 8 oz. of mushroom and set aside.
  7. Place a large sauté pan over medium heat for 30 seconds, then add your neutral oil. After another 30 seconds, add your chopped bacon.
  8. Cook the bacon for 1 minute and add all your mushrooms (sliced & minced).
  9. Cook for 3-4 minutes or until the bacon starts to brown and crisp slightly. Add the shallot and garlic to the pan and sauté until fragrant, about 30 seconds.
  10. Add the flour to the pan and whisk ensuring no lumps form in your roux.
  11. In a small saucepan, heat your cream to just below a boil. Add the cream to the bacon roux mixture in 1 cup increments, thoroughly whisking after each addition to ensure no lumps form.
  12. Add salt and pepper and remove from the heat. Allow it to cool to room temperature.
  13. Chop the green beans into 1 ½ inch pieces and add to the bacon mixture. If you are prepping ahead, stop here.
  14. Thinly slice the onion on a mandolin and soak in buttermilk for 10-15 minutes. Add flour and salt to a mixing bowl.
  15. Remove onions from buttermilk and toss in flour mixture until fully coated. Fry in oil at 300° for 45 seconds to a minute or until they stop bubbling heavily.
  16. Bake green bean casserole, covered, for 40 minutes at 350°. Remove from oven, top with crispy onions, and serve.

Recipe Notes

For the crispy onions, I just do salt here. I believe adding a whole bunch of seasonings is lost in translation when you are eating everything together.

It is important to heat the cream before adding it to our roux mixture. If you add cold cream, the temperature change will cause the fat to seize and won’t allow the flour to fully mix into the added cream, causing our sauce to break. You could also allow the roux to cool a bit and add the cold cream, but I thought it would be faster to heat the cream than cool the roux.

I chose to cut the green beans into bite sized pieces, you can leave them whole if you like the natural whole food approach. However, the ease of eating bite sized pieces is more appealing to me in a holiday gathering situation.