Elevate your plain green beans with lemon and garlic for an easy, fresh and bursting with flavour side dish! Then top with Parmesan cheese for that salty, umami hit! Serve with our Crispy Air Fryer Potatoes.
Perfect side dish for your Easter table.
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Adding layers of flavour to simple dishes is one of the reasons I love cooking and feeding people. Apart from the cooking process itself, watching people’s reaction of surprise, satisfaction and joy is what makes my job so worthwhile.
This simple green bean recipe is no exception. Green beans are not my favourite if I am completely honest. The only way I really like them is in this homemade from scratch Green Bean Casserole, smothered in a creamy mushroom sauce.
I find the taste of unadorned green beans lacking, so I decided to come up with a recipe that would change that opinion.
Lemon Garlic Butter Sauce
Let’s talk about the magic that lemon garlic sauce can bring into a very dull situation. And I am about to introduce this sauce to my ordinary green beans to give them an extraordinary boost.
Lemon and garlic have the ability to turn boring food into a dish packed with flavour and zing. And butter needs no introduction! All vegetables benefit from being bathed in a touch of butter.
Great news is lemon garlic butter sauce is incredibly easy to make and it takes mere minutes! Simply saute minced garlic in butter over low heat for half a minutes, then hit it with freshly squeezed lemon juice and more butter. Done!
Recipe Tips and Notes
- Use fine green beans, sometimes called French green beans. They are more tender and cook faster.
- Blanch the trimmed green beans for 4-5 minutes, then drain them and plunge into ice cold water immediately. This trick stops the beans from cooking and allows them to retain that vivid green colour you see in the photos. Keep the beans in the ice water while you are making the lemon garlic butter sauce.
- Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a frying pan and add minced garlic, saute over low heat for 30 seconds. We are looking to soften garlic, not to colour it. Watch closely as burnt garlic taste bitter and will ruin the sauce.
- Add fresh lemon juice and a few lemon slices together with the remaining butter, stir until the butter melts.
- Add the green beans and toss until they are coated in the lemon garlic sauce. There should be enough of the sauce just to coat the vegetables. Continue sautéing over low heat for about 5 minutes until the beans are desired doneness.
- Sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese right before serving. Use freshly grated Parmesan for the best flavour.
More delicious vegetable side dishes:
- Roasted Parmesan Broccoli
- Crispy Brussels Sprouts with Honey and Bacon
- Roasted Carrots with Garlic Lemon Tahini Sauce
- Roasted Asparagus and Radishes with Mustard Vinaigrette
Lemon Garlic Green Beans with Parmesan
Ingredients
- ½ lbs green beans washed and trimmed
- 2-3 tbsp butter
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1.5 lemons
- salt and pepper to taste
- 25g/1/4 cup This is an affiliate link.Parmesan cheese
Instructions
- Wash and trim the ends of the green beans. Parboil them for 4-5 minutes.
- Melt 1 tbsp of butter in a frying pan and sauté the minced garlic for 30 seconds on low heat, add the juice of one lemon along with a few lemon slices and the remaining butter.
- Drain the beans and immediately plunge them in ice water to keep the colour, then add them to the pan with the lemon garlic butter sauce, season with salt and pepper, sauté for a few minutes until the beans are desired doneness. 5 minutes of sauteing over low heat will deliver beans, that are tender but still have a bite to them. Increase cooking time by a couple of minutes if you prefer softer beans.
- Serve immediate topped with freshly grated Parmesan cheese.
