Roasted Green Beans

Hello again! This is such a simple "recipe." I put it in quotations because I never measure when it comes to roasted vegetables. They are so easy and always delicious. I would say roasting is probably the way I cook most vegetables, and especially green beans. 

Okay, so step one to roasting green beans: Blanch them! If you need a refresher on how to blanch green beans, read this. After blanching and drying, you will have a beautiful pan of green beans like this one:

Okay so next, remove the towel unless you want it to catch on fire in your oven. I don't, so I always remove the towel. :-) Is it bad that now all I can think of is this:  

Anyway...next drizzle those green beans with some olive oil (probably 1-2 Tablespoons) then sprinkle with whatever seasonings you like. I was using Asian flavors in the rest of my meal, so I seasoned my green beans with salt, white pepper, garlic powder, and ground ginger. I would have definitely tossed some sesame seeds on there if my kids weren't eating, but they don't get sesame seeds. I forgot to take a picture of the precooked seasoned green beans, so let's just pretend that the ones above are seasoned. 

I like roasting vegetables at a fairly high temperature. My favorite part are the charred, brown edges that come from roasting. I roast my green beans at 425 degrees. I start checking them around 10 minutes, give the pan a shake and a stir, then back in the oven until they are as done as you like them, usually 5 more minutes or so. 

When they come out they look like this: 

Yum! These are delicious eaten straight from the pan with your fingers! Not that I ever do that...

We had these delicious green beans with rice and soy brown sugar chicken. (The chicken was also very tasty. I used this recipe but with chicken breasts instead.)

I saw Molly Yeh make this delicious looking sesame sauce on the Food Network the other day, and I've been dying to try it! It was super easy to make and both the green beans and chicken were delicious dunked in it. 

My kids love these green beans, which is just wonderful. My 6-year-old had 3 helpings! The almost 4-year-old enjoyed hers as well...both playing with them and eating. :-) 

I hope you'll try some roasted green beans if you haven't already. If you give these a try, please comment below and let me know if you liked them! 

How to Blanch Green beans

As I'm reworking the blog, I've decided I'm going to share what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis in my kitchen. This morning I did some veggie prep. I always blanch green beans, no matter how I am going to cook them. (In case you don't know already, blanching the green beans simply refers to cooking them for a short period of time in boiling water, then immediately putting them into cold ice water to stop the cooking process.) I find that it makes them more tender and helps them to cook through in the inside before they have completely burnt on the outside. Plus they turn a beautiful vibrant green.

First you need to prep your green beans. I have been prepping fresh green beans for pretty much my entire life. My grandmother has a huge garden and it is mostly made up of green beans. I pop off both ends of green beans, carefully pulling down the bean to remove any strings. I leave the beans long because we love them that way. My grandmother always had us "pop" the beans in to smaller pieces.

First of all, I GREATLY underestimated the number of green bean plants I should, well, plant. We moved this summer (Yay!), so we inherited the garden that was already at our house (also yay!), but we added a few of our own touches as well. We planted 3 green bean sprouts...one of which I accidentally destroyed. For the record, 2 green bean plants do not grow nearly enough green beans to feed my family. So here are my beans all prepped:

Look at the right side...the original plan was to compare the color of the green beans from my garden to the store bought ones (the ones from the garden were much darker!). But just look at the tiny little spot of green beans on the left (grown by me) versus the giant mountain of green beans from the grocery store. Ah well...seems like next year I'll need to plant at least 10 green bean plants! 

So, back to the blanching...prep your green beans, give them a rinse, and bring some water up to a boil. I add some salt to the water after it starts boiling to season the beans. Add your green beans a little at a time. I like to add a handful let it come back to a bubble, then add another handful, and so on until they are all boiling. If you add them all at once, your water will stop boiling then you will have to wait for it to come back up to a boil and you might over cook your beans! Blanching is quick cooking...like 3-5 minutes. I cooked mine for 4 minutes. After cooking you plunge the green beans into ice water.

Okay, bear with me, I'm about to break all the rules.

You see, I don't put my blanched veggies into a bowl of ice water. That creates a bowl that is now dirty and has to be washed...and I hate washing dishes. So I put a good layer of ice in the bottom of my colander, fish the green beans out of the pot with a slotted spoon and add them to the icy colander. I do this as quickly as possible and I have additional ice standing by to add through out. Then I run cold water from the faucet and move the green beans around. They are still in ice water, but there is no extra bowl!

Next I move the green beans to a towel to dry. Note that the towel is on a baking sheet...this is not an extra dirty dish. I will use this to roast these green beans later tonight for dinner.

Also I find that fresh green beans last longer after blanched and dried. Fresh green beans only last a few days in the fridge without getting all brown and yucky, but this seems to extend the life for a few more days. Also, now my beans are fully prepped and ready to be cooked at dinner time. More on dinner later...for now, happy vegetable blanching!

Oops...did I forget I had a blog?

I think I may have forgotten all about the blog...oops. I have to say I am not the best at time management, obviously. One thing I know is the past blog format is not working for me. I think, for now, I am done with step-by-step photos. I am lucky to get a photo of the finished product before I start stuffing my face, so step-by-step photos just become very tedious and quite difficult with two little ones running around. Basically, I am hitting the reset button on this blog and trying some new things. I am not deleting the posts that are here because, well, they are filled with my kids' sweet little faces, and I can't bear to delete them! (Seriously, you should see the number of photos on my phone...) Also, I regularly refer to many of the recipes even still! Here we ago again...new year, new blog!