Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
When the beans are good and very fresh, you might as well enjoy them while still a little crunchy and serve them almost plain, lightly seasoned, to fully enjoy them.
Boiled green beans are often served as an accompaniment. I really like them in salads too, like here with a vinaigrette to which crumbled hard-boiled eggs have been added, this makes it almost a complete dish for a light lunch (in this case increase the quantity of egg to 1 per person).
From the base of ingredients given in the recipe, enhance according to the products you have and your tastes. Sherry, cider or balsamic vinegar, half olive oil / half rapeseed oil, a little walnut or hazelnut oil… A few spices or chopped fresh herbs (parsley, coriander, chives…) also why not. Same for mustard. Personally I like whole-grain mustards but it can be a tarragon or honey mustard…
Before the recipe some information on cooking beans. You can opt for cooking:
- in (salted) water, this is called English cooking.
- steaming like me, this preserves the vitamin C content (I am lucky to have a steam oven that I use a lot, but there are very effective small steamers, and even steam baskets in food processors like the CookExpert).
3 Notes:
- For English cooking, do not cover as this will cause the beans to oxidize by the water vapor droplets. I have not yet unraveled the mystery of the risk of oxidation or not in the event of steam cooking.
- Cooking time depends on the size of the beans and whether you like them crunchy or not. The best test is with the tip of a knife. On average 10 – 15 minutes depending on the size of the beans.
- To preserve a nice green color in the beans (and stop the cooking), it is recommended to immerse them in a large bowl of iced water. As we are going to eat them cold here, it’s perfect, they will also start to cool.
For cooking eggsremember the 3-6-9 rule.
- 3 minutes: boiled
- 6 minutes: calf
- 9 minutes: hard (that’s what we need here)
Green bean salad with hard-boiled egg vinaigrette
When the beans are good and very fresh, you might as well enjoy them while still a little crunchy and serve them almost plain, lightly seasoned, to fully enjoy them.
To prevent sleep
The main stages: We cook the beans and eggs separately. We chop the hard-boiled eggs, make a vinaigrette and assemble before serving.
Here I used cider vinegar (because I didn’t want to color the eggs red with wine or balsamic vinegar), a mix of walnut and rapeseed oil and a classic Dijon mustard.
Enjoy your food !