"green bean casserole" news and stories

Green bean casserole, America's favorite Thanksgiving side dish, is traditionally creamy by way of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup and crispy with the help of French's canned fried onions. This version gets a healthy, from-scratch makeover with sweet caramelized onions and a homemade mushroom sauce.

Get the recipe to this classic along with many others after the jump.

There are few holiday dishes so polarizing as green bean casserole. If it was part of your usual Yuletide feast growing up, the stuff is sacrosanct and utterly essential to holiday joy. The bulk of it -- the french-cut green beans, cream of mushroom soup and French-fried onion strings -- must come blopping and clattering from cans and be baked in a casserole until it resembles a roiling green bog topped with a dry moss of frizzled onion straws. There are always seconds, and there's hardly ever any left over for a midnight refrigerator picnic.

If you didn't grow up with it skulking on the holiday table, good gravy, does that stuff look ten-foot-pole nasty.

To quote Tom Cruise on The Today Show, "Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt..."

Matt Wilson over at Cracked.com gives his list of the Best and Worst Thanksgiving Food. I made a prediction before I even read the piece that turkey, stuffing, and pie would be in the "best" category, while green bean casseroles and yams would be in the "worst." Well, I was partly right. He actually lists turkey in the "worst" category!

Whaaaaa?

He gives big props to pie, corn on the cob, and yams though. He doesn't like the cranberry sauce in a can, and it makes me wonder if he even knows you don't have to have it in can, you can actually make fresh stuff yourself!

Matt, seriously, how can you not like turkey? Are you a Communist? (Funny part about the family awkwardness though.)

So what are your favorite ane least favorite Thanksgiving Day foods?

I think I may have finally cured my family of the green bean casserole.

Every year I try to introduce new dishes to my family's Holiday dinner tables in order to get replace some of the ones that I *ahem* hate. Okay, so I don't hate creamed corn, and mashed potatoes aren't terrible; it's just that we have the exact same thing every effin' year, and the dishes that we could "jazz up" into Parmesan and Roasted Garlic Smashed Potatoes or Cornbread and Sausage Stuffing, are rejected the next year for the boring, plain traditional ones. The one I hate the most is the ultimate poster child of the Food Network show Unwrapped - green bean casserole. It's made from frozen vegetables, canned soup, and pull top canister onions.

But this year, I blanched fresh green beans for a few minutes, wrapped them in bacon, and roasted them at 350 for 15 minutes, a la Paula Deen. They were awesome. Not a single one left. My sister made them the next day for her party, too.

We'll see if the green bean casserole makes it to the table next year.