Green Beans with Toasted Almonds

A friend of mine saw a recipe for green beans with toasted almonds as a one pot dish and gave it a try. She was not happy with the results and called me to find out why. She had followed all the instructions except for one, she upscaled the recipe by a factor of three. The recipe would have worked fine for a very small batch, but not practical for feeding ten.

For her next batch, we did things a little different. I am a proponent of dinner is assemble not cooked. The individual parts are cooked. The green beans are a great example. The main concern here is the cooking times. A big pile of green beans is going to take a fair amount of heat to cook to the desired level of done. Since the goal was green beans with toasted almonds, here is what we did.

We started with about a pound of fresh green beans and rinsed, removed the ends, and cut the beans in half. Next, they went into the steamer. Once we had the green beans cooking, we spread the sliced almonds out on the baking sheet and into the oven they went at 350 f.

Time wise, they turned out to be a close race. The almonds were nice and toasted a couple of minutes before the green beans were done, so they came out of the oven and waited. A minute or two later, the green beans were about 95% done. Since the finished effect she wanted was basically a stir fry type presentation, the green beans went into the big pan with a dash of oil and light sprinkle of salt and pepper. After a couple of turns over a high heat, we tossed in the almonds and finished it out.

She got the finished effect she was looking for and her guests got a tasty and properly cooked dish. Everyone was happy.