Green Bean Casserole
An annual Thanksgiving Day traditional dish that some can’t fathom celebrating the holiday without, green bean casserole can be as polarizing—you either love it or you hate it—and pandering to the persnickety preferences of diners—you either adore the way your mom made it, with canned beans and cream of mushroom soup and littered with deep-fried dehydrated onion scraps sold in an aluminum tin, or you won’t touch anything but a homemade version made with a mushroom-speckled cream sauce, fresh and snappy green beans, and freshly frizzled onion straws.
We trot to the “love it” side and fall into the DIY camp when it comes to green bean casserole. We used Primal Kitchen No-Dairy Roasted Garlic Alfredo Sauce (you can also use the No-Dairy Alfredo Sauce if you don’t want any garlic flavor) to make things a little easier, but make no mistake: No dish worthy of the Thanksgiving feast tends to be effortless unless it’s a raw vegetable salad. This dish takes a few steps to complete, but you can make the casserole part the day before, cover it and refrigerate it, fry the onion straws and bake the casserole on the big day to save a bit of time. You’ll be rewarded with verdant, crunchy green beans cloaked in creamy, earthy sauce, topped with crispy tangles of lightly battered onion wisps. No mushy, brown-tinted canned green beans, no gloopy canned sauce, and no over-salted, greasy onion dust. If you haven’t tried a homemade version of green bean casserole made with fresh produce, high-quality sauce, and DIY fried onions, find out what you’ve been missing and make it this year.
Green Bean Casserole
Time: 55 minutes
Servings: 8
Ingredients
For the crispy onion topping:
- Primal Kitchen Avocado Oil for frying (fill the oil halfway up the sides of your frying vessel)
- ¼ cup Cassava Flour
- ¼ cup Arrowroot Flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- Extra salt for seasoning
- ½ onion, sliced super thin
For the rest of the casserole, you will need:
- ½ onion, diced
- ½ cup organic mushrooms (we used shiitake), sliced thin (4 ounces)
- 3 ¼ cups fresh, organic green beans (about 800 grams)
- 1 tablespoon Cassava Flour
- 4 tablespoons Primal Kitchen Avocado Oil
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- 2 Jars Primal Kitchen No-Dairy Alfredo or No-Dairy Garlic Alfredo sauce
Instructions
To make the crispy onion topping:
- Heat fryer to 390ºF. We used an Instant Pot and fry basket to shallow fry the onions, but you can use a pot on the stove and measure the temperature with a candy thermometer. Add enough oil to your vessel so it reaches about halfway up the sides of the pot.
- Slice half of an onion into thin rings, and cut those rings in half.
- Make batter; toss onion slices in it to coat.
- Don't fry all at once—fry in batches, depending on the size of your fryer or pot.
- Note: Try to "sprinkle" the onion rings into the oil but understand they will clump together in a nest… and that's OK.
- Fry for 2–3 minutes and flip to fry for another 2–3 minutes.
- Remove from oil and place on a paper towel-lined cookie sheet.
- Quickly season with salt (lightly). Let cool, and then break the onion nests apart.
Warning: These onion crisps are incredibly tasty. Be careful to not eat all of them as you cook.
To make the green bean casserole:
- Preheat oven to 350ºF.
- Boil green beans until tender, about 4–5 minutes, drain, and set aside.
- Heat 1 tablespoon avocado oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Saute mushrooms and onions for about 8 minutes or until golden. Season with salt and pepper, and set aside.
- In the same skillet, heat 3 tablespoons avocado oil. Sprinkle in cassava flour and whisk for one minute until golden.
- Pour Alfredo sauce into the skillet, and whisk for about a minute.
- Add in the mushroom/onion mix, and whisk.
- Add in cooked green beans, and turn off the stove.
- Pour beans and sauce into a 9 x 13” baking dish.
- Top with fried onions and bake, uncovered, for 30 minutes.
Nutritional information (per serving):
Calories: 264
Carbs: 22 grams
Fat: 19 grams
Protein: 2.5 grams
Nutritional information calculated using Cronometer.
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