How to make canned green beans taste better

Reality is that most people don’t have a garden. And if you want to get even more real, it’s probably safe to say you haven’t so much as stuck your pinky finger in any dirt to grow anything, ever. But you like yourself some good green beans and would love that home-grown, slow cooked taste on your dinner table.  You can actually get it from a canned green bean. Here’s every tip you need to make canned green beans taste better–or dare I say–good enough you won’t even need a garden. 

The secret to make a canned green bean taste better isn’t the least bit difficult, I promise.

And while my grandmother and even my mom still use the bacon or ham-hock approach to their beans, I’ve gone a different route over the last year or so and I have to say, they make some pretty fabulous green beans–leaving them tender and full of slow-cooked flavor when they didn’t take very long at all.

You can use my great bean approach with any style you like.

The trick here is simple: you need canned beans, some beef bouillon and two cooking times. Now don’t die…let me explain.

A note on salt and bouillon

You start by dumping your canned beans into a pot (don’t drain them).

Then I use my favorite beef bouillon called Better Than Bouillon or you can use a cube of it if you’d prefer.

You can find either of these in the soup section of your grocery store.

Certain brands of bouillon are very salty. Powdered ones are terrible. Please keep this in mind and start with half as much if you are afraid of over salting.

I’ve never had any issues with Better Than Bouillon being too salty but I cannot speculate on the others–some can ruin a dish easily so try to get what we know works.

Then you turn your beans on high heat and bring them to a boil. Turn the heat down to medium-high and then cook about 90% of the water off.

When there’s a 1/2 left in the bottom of the pan, turn your beans off and walk away.

If you can, leave them sitting on the stove top for several hours. It’s fine to leave them there all day while you’re gone to work or you can put them in the fridge if that freaks you out and do the second step when you get in.

The final step is to bring them back to a low simmer and cook off the rest of the liquid and serve–that takes about 10 minutes or so.  

A long rest between cooking gives the bouillon time to really get in to the beans and they take on a soft, slow-cooked flavor.

No one will ever know you don’t have a half-acre of them in the back yard.

I’ll attempt to make this in to a logical recipe you can follow.