When you cook green beans this holiday season, will you open a can of condensed soup and let the beans bake for hours? Most people do. Baking vegetables over a long period of time reduces their nutrient value.
Plus, if you are trying to have a stress-free holiday cooking experience, you’re probably preparing the casserole a day in advance. That large casserole dish takes up a lot of room in your refrigerator. And, since it’s flat, there are usually items piled on top of it, further ruining its appeal.
There’s a better way to retain the nutrients when you cook green beans, save refrigerator space, and make it much easier on yourself come the big holiday meal.
Steaming is the best method to “par-cook” vegetables before preparing them in other ways. ManPans Cookware was kind enough to furnish a free set of pans for me to play with, and I especially like the steamer insert for their wok.
The steamer insert allows me to cook green beans until they’re slightly soft, but not completely done. I’ll “shock” the beans by submerging them in ice water, stopping the cooking immediately. These vegetables are now partially cooked, but retain more nutrition than baking them in a fatty sauce.
Since we’ve cooked such nice beans, it seems a shame to cover them with canned soup. I can call upon some basic cooking methods and create a roux to thicken simmering milk. The cold roux is added to the hot milk in small increments until the liquid thickens to the consistency I’d like.
Then, I can add cheddar cheese for Broccoli in Cheese Sauce, or add diced mushrooms and create my own quick white sauce with mushrooms that didn’t come from a can.
Combining my partially cooked green beans with the mushroom white sauce in a plastic zipper bag allows me to simply warm it up in boiling water when the holiday meal comes.
The best way to cook string beans, save refrigerator space, and give yourself time to actually enjoy your holiday meal this year is to consider steaming and shocking vegetables first.
Do you have a favorite holiday casserole dish? Leave a comment below:
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I was thinking later about the reheating of the bagged vegetables in hot water, and I have to go with Stephanie on this, too, that it seems better to mix the pre-cooked vegetables with a fresh sauce. I did this today and it turned out great. I used Swiss chard with sautéed flour-coated eggplant (only the chard was cooked ahead of time), then made a cheese sauce (all in the same pan) and it was a very easy side dish reminiscent of Moussaka Verde.
It certainly is a great idea to cook those veggies ahead of time, because with very little notice, you can come up with a meal if you have some ready-to-go vegetables on hand. And now I even apply another of Chef Todd’s tips and weigh them before I cook them, so I end up with exactly the right amount for a meal for my family. Thanks for the time- and money-saving tips, Chef Todd.
I have to agree with Edith on being loathe to use soft plastic baggies with hot foods and hot water. Visions of leaching petrochemicals are not reassuring. Could we not store the beans in better containers (glass or hard plastic) in the fridge, take them out an hour or so before serving and make a fresh sauce with the roux and let the sauce warm the beans up? This is my plan for today.
And thank you very much for the fresh mushroom sauce idea. That sounds fabulous!
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I love this idea, but I’m wondering why you advise your viewers to let the roux cool before putting it into a plastic container, yet you put hot steamed vegetables–and cream sauce–directly into the zip-loc bags, which are also plastic? Isn’t it unhealthy to have hot foods come into contact with plastic? Thanks in advance for the reply. I would like nothing better than to be able to throw everything into zip-loc bags but I am uneasy about it.
Roux is MUCH hotter than cold shocked green beans in a warm white sauce.
Roux will melt plastic right out of the pan.