Has there ever been a better combination than green beans and bacon, cooked slowly with onion and garlic?
Well… yeh, my grandmother would take a jar of her home-canned green beans and fry them kinda quickly in bacon fat with onions and new potatoes, but I was starting with fresh beans, and planning on baked potatoes with the rest of dinner, so this seemed to me to be the option to take.
And it’s a good one…
INGREDIENTS
•12 oz bacon
•12 oz green beans, trimmed
•1 onion, diced
•2 cloves garlic, minced
•Olive oil
•1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
•1 tsp Aleppo pepper
•1 tbsp lemon zest
•Fresh parsley, chopped
Note: if you can’t get Aleppo pepper, try Cayenne or crushed red, but mebbe cut the amount in half.
Brown the bacon over medium-high heat in a large pan or Dutch oven (my tagine worked a treat), then remove and drain on paper towels.
Add a bit of water to deglaze the pan, scraping up any bits o’ bacon stuck to the bottom of the pan, then add a bit of olive oil, if needed, and the onion and garlic.
Sauté for five minutes, until the onion is tender and the garlic lightly fragrant, then add the green beans.
Top the green beans with the drained bacon, add water to almost cover the beans, then cover and simmer for one hour.
Remove the cover, stir in the balsamic vinegar – we get ours from an Oil and Vinegars specialty shop; it’s aged for 25 years, has kinda spoiled us for any others, and at $20 for 375mL, I don’t consider it too pricey.
Bring the the beans back to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for another 30 minutes to reduce the sauce a bit.
I sprinkled ours with a bit of fresh parsley, and served the beans with some grilled buttermilk-marinated pork chops and baked potato for dinner. Annnd – you caught me – yes, at home, I add a bit of ketchup (especially my own, spicy ‘sup!) to my baked potato in place of sour cream. Don’t judge; it’s waaay lower in fat, and not too, too bad.