The Best Green Bean Casserole Recipes to Grace Your Thanksgiving Dinner Table (2024)

FAQs

Is green bean casserole better with canned or fresh? ›

Green beans from a can have already been cooked to death right in the can and harbor plenty of sodium that could make your casserole too salty. Frozen French-cut green beans are a better option. They hold their texture better than canned, and you can cook them straight from their frozen state.

How It Became a Holiday Staple. Green bean casserole was considered a perfect dish for holiday entertaining because it was simple, inexpensive, and could easily be made ahead of time. It became known as a "jiffy casserole" because it went from one bowl to one pan.

Green Bean Casseroles are served at 20 million Thanksgiving dinners every year.

Notes: ✿ 4 cups of green beans is about 1½ pounds fresh or 16 ounces frozen or 2 cans (15 ounces each) drained.

Green Bean Casserole Tips

Don't overcook the green beans: Remember when you are blanching the green beans that they will continue to cook and soften while baking in the oven with the rest of the casserole. So it's important to undercook them slightly during this first step so that they don't get mushy in the oven.

Unless the recipe tells you to keep the canned beans in their liquid, you should drain your can and give the beans a good rinse before using. This will improve the flavor and texture of your finished dish. Open your cans of beans using a can opener. There may be sharp edges from opening the can.

The Green Beans Are Mushy

Oftentimes, mushy green beans come down to one of two issues. The first is simply that you overcooked them, and they lost their shape and texture.

You can safely estimate that one handful of green beans will serve one person, or two people if you have other green sides, Hartigan says. While these calculations seem straightforward, the full breadth of your menu could reduce the IRL size of each serving—after all, there's only so much room on one plate.

Green beans: 1 ½ pounds of beans makes 6 to 8 servings. Mashed potatoes: A 5-pound bag of potatoes makes 12 to 16 servings.

Did the Pilgrims eat green bean casserole? ›

Of course, we know that isn't exactly accurate. For one thing, macaroni and cheese is definitely not a traditional Thanksgiving food, nor did the Pilgrims and Wampanoag have oven-safe dishes for baking green-bean casseroles.

How many dishes should I serve with the turkey? For 4 people, choose 1-2 appetizers and 3 sides. For 8 people, choose 1-3 appetizers and 3 sides. For 16 people, choose 2-3 appetizers and 3 or more sides.

Stored properly, your leftover green bean casserole will last 3-4 days in the fridge. Freezing: Wrap your green bean casserole tightly with heavy-duty aluminum foil, freezer wrap or transfer to an airtight container and keep in the freezer for 6 months.

We found that 1 pound contains about 35 to 40 green beans which yields about 3 cups chopped, making a 1/3 pound purchase just about right for a 1 cup chopped green bean recipe. Remember when cooked, 1 cup of green beans will reduce in quantity by 2 to 3 tablespoons.

If you don't have dried beans, you can substitute canned. For every pound of dried beans called for... ...you'll need 58 ounces of canned beans (3 or 4 cans, depending on size).

Looking at the nutrition information between canned and fresh green beans revealed that the nutritional content is pretty similar between the two. However, one of the primary differences is sodium content, with canned green beans having more than fresh vegetables.

When I run out of those, or when it's off season, frozen or canned green beans are a perfectly acceptable substitute. Hands down, my number one favorite way to enjoy fresh green beans is the old fashioned slow stewed way.

"Frozen beans hold their texture and flavor better when cooked, while canned beans can become mushy," says Lauren Allen, the owner and creator of recipe website Tastes Better From Scratch and an Amazon best-selling cookbook by the same name.

Vegetables including tomatoes, spinach, and green beans are some of the commonly canned vegetables that are rich in vitamin C. While the initial blanching process results in some vitamin C losses, the remaining vitamin C is preserved longer after canning.