French Green Beans with Hazelnut Butter

The combination of hazelnuts, lemon and shallots in these French Green Beans elevates this side dish to a completely amazing level.  You’ll definitely want to come back for seconds!! 

Well by now you probably you know that veggies are really not one of my favorite things, however, green beans are on the short list of veggies that I actually like.  When you add some simple, fresh seasoning to them, they become simply wonderful!  To me, green beans and Easter go hand-in-hand so with Easter quickly approaching I wanted to share one of my favorite green bean recipes.

This recipe uses french green beans or haricot vert.  What’s the difference you might ask?  French green beans are thinner and more tender than traditional green beans.  They are harvested sooner than traditional green beans, making them more flavorful.  I pretty much use them exclusively when I make any dish with green beans.

Making Green Beans

You’ll start by rinsing the beans and then and trimming the stems off.  While you certainly can remove the stems by hand, this takes forever!  So a quicker and easier way to do this is to arrange small groups of the beans with the stems all pointing the same direction and then cut the stem end off the entire pile at the same time.  No worry if they aren’t all even – no one will notice!

For this recipe, you’ll want to use a sauté pan with a lid.  Once you add the water, cover the beans and cook over medium-high heat.  Resist the urge to open the lid, but do keep an eye on them, as there should be water in the bottom of the pan.  After 6 minutes you’ll remove the lid and let the beans keep cooking until the water boils off.  This should take about 2 minutes, but again keep a close watch on the pot, and if the water boils off before two minutes immediately remove from heat.

You’ll find a lot of green bean recipes that call for sauteing the bean in butter.  Instead of cooking them in butter,  I use a compound butter added at the end to ensure all the beans get coated evenly and the flavors stay fresh and bright.

For Easter dinner I’d serve these with a traditional ham;  like this Bourbon Orange Glazed Ham from The Chunky Chef or this Campfire Sugar Ham from Dinner, Then Dessert.

For a non-holiday meal, they are great with roasted or grilled chicken, a nice filet or even a piece of grilled halibut.

The combination of shallots, lemon and hazelnuts in this recipe is a little bit addicting – I could pretty much eat the entire pound in one sitting if I didn’t exercise a bit of self-control!

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