Southern-Style Green Beans are cooked long and slow until melt in your mouth tender. Flavored with lots of bacon.
I’m always in for a home-cooked southern vegetable. A whole plate of them is best. There’s rarely a time I can resist a veggie plate at a restaurant. Especially if said plate includes Southern-Style Green Beans, slow cooked in a bacon-infused broth until tender and soft.
I know it is fashionable to serve green beans barely cooked so they still have some crunch to them and retain they’re bright green color. Admittingly, the color of Southern-Style Green Beans isn’t nearly as appealing as that of fresh green beans.
But cook green beans low and slow in a broth flavored with bacon, and you’ll go back for seconds and thirds. They’re so good, you’d be content to eat a big plate of green beans for a meal.
During the cooking process, they soak up an amazing amount of flavor from bacon grease, chicken broth, seasoned salt, and garlic powder. I start by cooking some diced bacon in a large pot. I then set the bacon aside, but leave all the grease in the pan. You can leave the bacon in the pot to cook with the beans, but it will get a soggy texture. But the up side is the beans will have even more bacony flavor. In this case, I’ve added the cooked bacon back once I’ve drained the beans, but sometimes I just leave it in the pot for the cooking process.
Many times a ham hock is used instead of bacon, or in addition to bacon. Traditionally, fat back (solid fat from a pig’s back) was a very popular choice for cooking green beans in the South and if you can get your hands on some good fatback, it is amazing. But good fatback is very hard to find these days. Pigs raised for the mass market are bred to be on the lean side and they are pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, which can really build up in a pig’s fat.
You want to cook Southern-Style Green Beans for at least an hour, preferably closer to 2 hours. You want them to get really soft, but not mushy, so that they are melt in your mouth tender. Just before serving, you can mix in a tablespoon or so of butter to give the green beans some a buttery coating.
This is one vegetable no one will complain about eating.
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Southern-Style Green Beans
Ingredients
- 4 slices bacon,,, diced
- 2 pounds green beans, ends snapped off and longer beans snapped in half
- 2 cups chicken broth
- 2 cups water
- 1 teaspoon seasoned salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1 tablespoon butter,, optional
Instructions
- Brown and crisp bacon in a large pot. Remove bacon from pot and reserve.
- Add green beans to pot along with all remaining ingredients, except butter.
- Bring to a boil and then turn heat to medium-low. Cover and simmer for 1-2 hours, stirring occasionally.
- Drain beans and add butter if using. Check beans for seasoning and add extra salt and pepper to taste. I like lots of black pepper. Sprinkle with bacon and toss to distribute the bacon and butter.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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What are your thoughts on using frozen beans on occasion? While I absolutely prefer fresh veggies of any kind, sometimes the fresh ones can be over-priced for the quality of the product the store is offering. Frozen is actually the next best thing to fresh rather than canned.
I cooked these the other night. Absolutely amazing. I also saute onions cut very fine.. also some red peppers. So delicious. The Red Peppers add a sweetness so you don’t need a lot. I’m getting hungry thinking about them now. I’ll have to revisit them again this weekend.
This is my first year cooking for Thanksgiving. If I double this recipe, would it be enough for a bigger family. Or should I triple? Thanks!
How many people Brittany?
Hi! i just wanted to let you know that I featured this recipe on my post about Thanksgiving Recipes (mixandmake.com/2017/11/17/easy-thanksgiving-recipes/).
We make our green beans very similar to this and it’s one of my favorite dishes! Thanks so much for posting this recipe!
Can these be cooked the night before and then reheated? The cooking times seem to vary based on the comments, so I’m unsure when to start them on Thanksgiving Day.
Yes, you can cook them and then reheat them.
Thank you!
Should I drain the beans if I cook the day before?
No, you can keep them in the liquid.
Hi there! Thanks for posting your recipe 🙂
In my family, holiday meals always included southern style green beans, cooked by my great grandmother or grand mother. They were so good there was never enough. The smoky flavor and chewy consistency were consistently delicious, every meal. I remember visiting my great-grandmother’s house and saw she just had these beans as one of her meal staples, like for lunch.
Now that both my grandmother and great-grandmother are no longer with us, the art of getting these beans to turn out has ascended to a sort of family folklore – everyone remembers how good they were, but no one agrees about the recipe, and none of us can seem to get them to turn out quite the same!
In any case, here is how I’ve managed to get my beans as close as I can to the fabled original:
– Use salt pork, and don’t skimp on it (1 lb per 5 lb of beans)
– Use fresh beans (canned are liable to be mushy)
– Simmer, don’t allow the beans to boil hard
– The beans should just be covered with water and allowed to simmer until all water has evaporated and a light brown has developed in the pan.
– As the water evaporates, the beans should also shrink, so for the first 5 – 6 hours the beans remain covered by the water. It helps if you arrange the beans parallel in the pan, so they stay tightly packed.
– Use a tilted (loosely placed) lid so you can control the evaporation rate. At the beginning you might even leae the lid off entirely but towards the end you’ll want the lid on so the top layer does not dry out.
– Never stir! You’ll shred the beans and they will turn to mush. I reach in with the wooden spoon and gently straighten the beans to make sure they stay as much in the water as possible.
Thanks so much for these wonderful tips for making green beans Chris!
Hey there! When using canned green beans (I know that is not preferred), what would be the time adjustment?
Thank you so much! Happy Thanksgiving!
I’ve done it with canned beans in a pinch. You want to drain the beans and give them about 45 minutes to simmer. Be sparing with the salt, since the beans, bacon, and broth are salty.
Thank you so much for the response. I really appreciate it!
Why not leave the bacon in while cooking??
You can but it will get soggy.
No real Southern cook would drain green beans! You cook them on high the last few minutes until all the water is absorbed, then serve them. And they don’t need butter, garlic, or chicken broth, just a little salt and some good fatback or streaked meat. (If you don’t know what that is, then you aren’t Southern!)
I beg your pardon, but I believe a real southerner would have better manners.
Better manners indeed..I prefer butter, garlic, and chicken stock. Delicious recipe!
Thank you Christine!
Joy, you are very rude… you can’t be a southerner because we have always cooked our green beans this way, Mississippi proud…. troll
Sorry she not really rude she’s right although Your recipewould work fine hers is true southern
“Old Ditty” , where’s the two-thumbs-up like button when you need it, I loved your reply, on Southern manners ; Always suggest, never tell someone their recipe is missing something, Ha,ha,ha !!!
On a serious note; is that cooking time correct, (1-2 hr.) ? It’s been awhile since I’ve made green beans. Thanks’ Christan
Ummm, I’ve lived in the south for my entire life.
1.) Any good Southern cook knows that you don’t get offended if someone alters a recipe, since any good Southern dish really has no recipe.
2.) You clearly aren’t from the South, because if you were, you’d know we COOK our vegetables and will find ways to use butter and broth and bacon grease.
It’s a good recipe. If you want Yankee green beans (what you described), they aren’t hard to find.
Any good cook knows the art of blending melodic flavors that tickle our fancy, into one bite of scrumptious heaven. There are no prerequisites for how you reach that, it’s just flavor, attained by employing any knowledge in ones arsenal of experience to deliver just that. If contrary to said perspective, I’d question ones intellect.
Never cook on high ,till all the water is gone, unless you like nasty tasting green beans
Wow Joy, please don’t be ‘that’ Southerner! You give us a bad reputation! Sweet, thoughtful and appreciative…. that’s how a ”REAL” Southerner acts. These beans are great… I’m sure yours are too, but play nice. Please!
take your fatback green beans and shove em up your ass! im sure youll enJOY that!
Yikes Mr Spicer ! This is NOT a political board – can’t we have a civil discussion on the best way to cook a vegetable ?
Oh, bless your heart!
Should you do anything differently if using frozen beans?
That’s Southern ,water salt and smoked ham hocks .! Fresh green beans from the farmers market is much better than you get at a grocery store . Southern food is simple food .
Just made for dinner. Was a big hit.
Hello, I am new to your site, but wanted to share something with you. Our family is really big on my pinto beans. We are from Texas and those long-cooked (fall apart tender) pinto beans is something that we love with Mexican food, South West food and just about anything else. For my beans, I usually use a smoked ham hock or, a smoked pork jowl (both from Smithfield Farms and found at Walmart)., Either of these could be used, in place of the bacon, for maximum flavor. 🙂