Roasted Green Beans

With Julie Geary

This is Julie Geary’s first installment of how you cut down – way down – on the amount of time it takes to prepare and cook a full Thanksgiving meal. Green beans are of course a popular side dish for the Thanksgiving table. You can do the old casserole thing but that would take longer, or you can try something a little different such as roasting them.

The first trick is to use a bag (or bags) of green beans that are already prepped – cut and washed. Why spend all of that time Thanksgiving morning cutting and prepping the regular string beans you buy at the supermarket. This saves a lot of time.

The technique involves roasting instead of steaming or boiling. They end up being a little crispy and shrink a bit, but the taste is more suthentic to some because you have not steamed or boiled the flavor out of the bean.

Ingredients

1 package of green beans, washed and cut
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt & Pepper
1 teaspoon fresh thyme

Instructions

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F.
1. Place green beans into a mixing bowl.
2. Mix with 2 olive oil. Add cracked salt & pepper to taste.
3. Separate fresh thyme leaves from the stalks and add to mixture. Add rest of olive oil and mix again.
4. Place beans into a casserole pan and into the oven for about 35 minutes.

They will shrink a bit and be a little crunchy.

Recipe courtesy of Julie Geary, Classic Cooks Catering, 2011.

Owner and Chef, Classic Cooks Catering

Classic Cooks has been entertaining since 1980 all over the North Shore and Boston area.  They catered the premier of the "Perfect Storm" movie for Warner Brothers for 2,000 guests.

The company was nationally televised doing a New England Clambake for Bobby Flay's Food Nation on the Food Channel.