Green Bean Casserole
Today my friends and I were making Thanksgiving dinner and one of the dishes we made was green bean casserole.
While this dish was simple to put together, we didn't gather the ingredients ahead of time and that caused for some occasional downtime.
Steps We Took:
Listening to Last.fm Radio Station: Florence + the Machine
Part 1:
Boiled water. The instructions called for 1 to 1.5 cups for a bag of green beans.
In a separate pan, Mark melted 1 tablespoon and 1/2 teaspoon of butter. I measured out 1 tablespoon and 1/2 teaspoon of flour and Mark mixed it in with the butter. Not ready to add the other ingredients, we left the pan aside.
At around this point in time, I realized we needed to begin boiling the green beans. Both the instructions on the back of the bag and a Google search suggested boiling green beans for about 7 minutes.* I then also learned that if boiling, a minimal amount of water should be used so we poured out some of the boiling water until we were left with about 2 to 3 cups before adding all the green beans to the pot. While some of the green beans laid above the water level, Mark and I agreed that we didn't need to add anymore water. We then set the timer for 7 minutes** and began working on the other part of the recipe.
I grounded and gathered 1/2 teaspoon salt and measured 1/2 teaspoon sugar. I diced a whole onion (I recall it was a sweet onion) and we put about 2 to 3 tablespoons in with the salt and sugar. Then, we scooped out between 3/4 to 1 cup of sour cream.*** Mark mixed the salt, sugar, onion, and sour cream together with the butter-flour mixture.
After the green beans were slightly overcooked from having boiled in the pot for an extra minute (for a total of eight minutes) we lined them up and cut them into thirds.**** Note that the package we bought already had the ends removed.
Mark mixed the green beans and previously prepared mixture together in a big pot and divided the mix into two containers. Technically it should all go into one big container, but I already reserved my largest glassware for the sweet potato casserole and figured two smaller containers would suffice.
We covered the top of the containers in clear plastic wrap and put them in fridge.
Listening to Last.fm Radio Station: Jack Johnson
Part 2:
Later at 4:56PM I finished the top of the casserole as follows. I mashed up some Ritz crackers in a measuring cup and added what remained of the butter - a little less than a tablespoon. Then over the Ritz crackers I sprinkled some cheese and immediately put the two containers into the oven and waited for 30 minutes.
*The bag also had instructions for preparing the green beans in a microwave.
**Given that the green beans would end up baking in the oven, perhaps 4 or 5 minutes would have sufficed as well.
***We had scaled the recipe by 3/5, which meant using approximately .604 cups of sour cream. However, some how we ended up just eyeballing the amount needed and the requested .604 cups became a vague "use about 1 cup of sour cream." Yikes.
****I made cuts perpendicular to the line, but I should have made diagonal cuts, which look much more elegant.
Comments:
Although we slightly overcooked the green beans, Mark and I figured it wouldn't have any impact on the dish.
Results:
Overall the dish was tasty, but I would have preferred grilling the onions a little first as opposed to working directly with them raw. Also, while the use of Ritz crackers for breading was interesting, I would consider finding a different choice of breading in the future.
[20121201]
Relevant Links:
Green Bean Casserole (AllRecipe.com)*
My Thanksgiving Dinner (Table of Contents) post
*The original recipe called for three 14.5 oz. cans of green beans. But I bought two 14 oz. bags of them so I changed the serving size of the recipe from 10 to 6.
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