Green Bean Casserole
By the Tapas kitchen · Updated
- Prep
- 20 min
- Cook
- 45 min
- Total
- 1 hr 5 min
- Yield
- Serves 8
This version makes its own mushroom sauce and fries its own shallots for the top, in place of a can of soup and a can of fried onions. Blanch the beans only until they bend but still snap (they soften again in the oven), and add the shallots for the last 3 minutes so they don't scorch.
Ingredients
Serves 8
For the beans
For the shallots
For the sauce
The salt amounts here are for Diamond Crystal kosher salt. If you have Morton kosher salt, use a little over half as much, because its grains are denser and saltier by the spoon.
Steps
- Heat the oven to 400°F. Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add the blanching salt, and set a big bowl of ice water next to the stove.
- Boil the beans until bright green and bendy but still with a snap, 4 to 5 minutes. Drain them straight into the ice water, then drain again and spread them on a towel to dry.
- Toss the shallots with half the flour and a pinch of salt. Heat the oil in a medium skillet over medium heat until a shallot ring sizzles on contact. Fry the shallots in two batches, stirring often, until evenly golden, 5 to 7 minutes per batch. Lift them onto paper towels while they are golden, not brown; they keep darkening as they drain.
- Melt the butter in a 12-inch oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms and the 1½ teaspoons of salt and cook, stirring now and then, until their liquid has cooked off and they are browned, about 8 minutes. Stir in the garlic and thyme for 30 seconds, then the remaining ¼ cup of flour for 1 minute.
- Whisk in the stock a little at a time, then the milk, soy sauce, nutmeg and pepper. Simmer, stirring, until it thickens enough to coat a spoon, 3 to 4 minutes. Taste it; the sauce has to season the beans, so it should taste slightly too salty on its own.
- Fold in the beans. Leave it in the skillet or scrape it into a 9-by-13-inch baking dish. Bake until bubbling at the edges, about 15 minutes.
- Scatter the shallots over the top and bake 3 minutes more, just to warm them through.
Notes
To get ahead on Thanksgiving, blanch the beans and fry the shallots a day or two before; keep the beans in the fridge and the shallots in an airtight container at room temperature. Assemble the casserole up to a day ahead, refrigerate, and give it 25 minutes in the oven before the shallots go on.
To make more or less of it, paste the ingredients into our recipe scaler and it works out every amount. If yours isn't a 9-by-13-inch baking dish, the pan size converter tells you how much to make for the pan you have.
