My Favorite Green Bean Casserole

The first casserole that I remember eating was made by my college friend/roommate Anne for a Thanksgiving dinner we celebrated away from our families back in the day when students who went out of state for college stayed out of state for the Thanksgiving holiday and fended for themselves to make some sort of a dinner. Anne had her family recipe for a casserole topped with corn flakes, and 20+ years later I vividly remember her casserole yet have no memories of ever eating one before that. I suppose that means I did not grow up eating them. In fact, I never eat them. I never make them. I never think about them. That has now all changed.

The January-February 2021 issue of Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street has a very intriguing recipe for a Ligurian Green Bean Casserole. It’s prefaced with this story about this particular Italian casserole that’s served on the street in paper bags for easy snacking. The story made me hungry so I thought I’d give this recipe a try.

It’s a lighter version of a casserole that uses mashed potatoes rather than heavy cream or cream of mushroom soup. Having almost all of the ingredients in my house, I tweaked their recipe ever so slightly by using house made veggie broth rather than water and by adding way more parmesan cheese than the recipe called for. I also halved their recipe to make just enough for a square pyrex, not a large portion for two people to eat all week long. Here is my version that I am adding to my favorites and will certainly be making again and again, and possibly in the larger format to snack on all week long.

Ingredients:

• 2 TB butter
• 1/2 pound red potatoes cut into small-ish pieces (the recipe called for Yukon gold)
• kosher salt and fresh ground pepper
• 2 cups veggie broth
• 2 TB olive oil
• 1 shallot, finely chopped
• 1/2 pound green beans (I used frozen)
• 4 ounces cremini mushrooms, trimmed and sliced
• 1 Tb minced fresh oregano
• 1 egg, beaten
• 5 ounces grated parmesan
• 1/4 cup panko breadcrumbs

Add 1 TB butter to a pan on medium-high and add potatoes and a pinch of salt once the butter melts. Stir the potatoes to coat, then pour in the broth, and cover until the potatoes are cooked. When they’re easily pierced with a fork, remove them from the heat and transfer them to a bowl to mash them by hand to the consistency of chunky mashed potatoes.

Return the pan on medium-high, add the olive oil, shallots, and a little more salt and cook about 5 minutes until the shallots are translucent but not brown. Add the green beans and sliced mushrooms and stir occasionally as they cook. Do not cook them all the way as they need to continue cooking in the oven. Pull them from the heat when the green beans are still bright green. Stir in the oregano right before turning off the heat. Transfer them to the bowl with the potatoes and mix to combine.

In another bowl, whisk the egg and mix in most of the parmesan, a little salt, and pepper. Fold this into the potato green bean mushroom mixture and then transfer to an oiled pyrex baking dish.

Heat the remaining oil and butter in a pan and coat the panko so it’s evenly moistened. Sprinkle over the potato mixture with some extra parmesan and bake at 400 for 30 minutes or so until bubbling at the edges.

This recipe is definitely a keeper in my opinion. The casserole itself is delicious. It’s great the following day with a fried egg on top as well. And the thing I appreciate most is this basic structure can be adjusted a little here and there with different potatoes, a variety of mushrooms, green beans or no green beans… I’ll have to see what I come up with.