How to Make a Green Bean Casserole from Scratch | America’s Test Kitchen

No need to rely on canned mushroom soup this holiday season; Upgrade your green bean casserole by using fresh ingredients. Keith Dresser shows Julia Collin Davison how to make this classic casserole from scratch, using fresh mushrooms and green beans, chicken broth, and a rich homemade sauce.

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– The recipe for green bean
casserole was first developed back in 1955 by the Campbell Soup Company as a way to promote their
cream of mushroom soup. And it has since become a
standard on holiday tables all across America. And today, Keith’s gonna
break the recipe down and show us how to make it from scratch using fresh ingredients. – Yeah, there’s nothing
wrong with that casserole. It’s actually quite tasty. But I’m gonna take each
component, we’re gonna look at it, make sure it has a fresh, homemade flavor. – I’m in. – We’re gonna start
with our mushroom sauce that’s gonna coat the green beans. So I’m gonna start with one
pound of white mushrooms. We’re actually gonna
break these into pieces. We’re not gonna slice ’em. We like chunks. So I just have a mushroom right here. And simple prep is just take a towel, wipe off any dirt on the outside of it, and then I just take the very bottom of the stem off like that. And now comes a fun part. You can put it down and you can smash it. – (laughs) What?
– Yeah. – I’ve actually never seen anyone do that. – That’s, I know, that’s the only time that I’ve done this is for this dish, is that you can just whack it once and then break it into
about half inch pieces. – [Julia] You getting some aggression out? – Yes. Yes. Okay. The mushrooms are
in half inch pieces, and we have three tablespoons
of butter in our dutch oven that’s melting over medium high heat. So I’ll add our mushrooms. And I also have three cloves
of garlic that we’ll add. 3/4 of a teaspoon of table salt, 1/8 teaspoon of pepper. Just wanna make sure this
is all stirred together and incorporated. So six minutes, we’ll let these cook. – All right. – It’s been six minutes and you can see how much those
mushrooms have cooked down. So now we need to thicken this, so I have three tablespoons
of all-purpose flour. I’m just gonna sprinkle
that over the mushrooms. Make sure it’s also well
distributed on those mushrooms. You don’t want any pockets of flour that won’t get incorporated
into the liquid later. So now for our liquid component, I’m gonna start with 1
1/2 cups of chicken broth. I wanna make sure that I get
that flour incorporated slowly. You can also make sure that
you stir into the corner and you get up any little
brown bits off the bottom of that pot, and you can add
a little bit more at a time once you get some of that broth in there. Okay, our stock is bubbling there and now we can add our 1
1/2 cups of heavy cream. So I’m just gonna stir
this in to incorporate it. Again, getting into the corners, make sure we have any flour incorporated. We’re gonna cook this over
medium heat for about 12 minutes. And what we’re looking for is
to reduce down to 3 1/2 cups. At that point, it’ll be
nice, rich, and velvety. It’s gonna be perfect. Now for the green beans. Traditionally this casserole
used frozen green beans, but we really want to control
the cook on the green beans, so we’re gonna blanch our own make sure it’s perfectly
cooked at the end. – [Julia] I like it. – So I have two pounds
of green beans here. Just a really quick, simple prep. You’re gonna take off the stem end. You can either snap it or
what I like to do is I like to grab four or five
beans at the same time, – Line ’em up like little soldiers? – Line ’em up like soldiers,
cut it off like that. And also, while you’re holding the knife and the green beans, you
could just kind of scooch back and we’re just gonna cut
these right in half crosswise. Okay, so that is our two
pounds of green beans that we’ve cut crosswise. Now it’s time to blanch them. So we’ll come down here and
I have four quarts of water that we’ve brought up to a boil, and I’m gonna add two
tablespoons of table salt. Now these are gonna cook for six minutes, and we’re looking for a
crisp, tender texture. It’s been six minutes, and I just want to check the progress of these green beans carefully. Hmm.
– Good? – They’re perfect right now. And I’m just gonna transfer
these over to an ice bath. We want to arrest the cooking right now. We don’t want these to hang
out and continue to cook and become kind of olive drab and mushy. And now I’m gonna transfer these over to a rimmed baking sheet that’s been lined with paper towels. So, and the reason why
we want these dry is that sauce is gonna be nicely thickened, and if we add more water to
it, it’s gonna get watery. And you don’t want that. Okay, so the green beans are out on our rimmed baking
sheet with paper towels. Those are gonna hang out and
dry while we look at our sauce. Now I measured this earlier and we reduced it down to 3 1/2 cups. And you can see that
it’s rich, it’s velvety. Our sauce is perfect and ready to go. And now we can get to my favorite part, which is the topping. (Julia laughs)
Now with this topping, we couldn’t really find an
improvement on the fried onions that are so classic to this dish. So we are gonna keep these onions because they’re so darn good. But we’re gonna improve
it just a little bit by adding some buttered
breadcrumbs to the mix. So I have three slices
of white sandwich bread that I’ve torn into quarters. I’m just gonna put this
into the food processor. I’m gonna add two tablespoons
of softened butter, 1/4 teaspoon of table salt,
1/4 teaspoon of pepper. We’re gonna pulse this 10 times and we’re gonna break those
down into course crumbs. So those are nicely processed. – [Julia] Nice and fluffy. – And we’re gonna go over to this bowl. So we’re gonna put our onions in here. And these are three cups of onions that are coming out of
a six ounce container. If you see any big pieces
of onions, I kind of like- – You eat them. (both laugh) – I just like to break them up because they have a
tendency to burn on the top. Or you could eat them, either way. Okay. We have our green
beans, we have our sauce, and we have our topping. Now it’s time to put everything together. So, start with the green beans. If you could hand those to me.
– Here you go. – Thank you very much. – [Julia] Ah, you’re using
the paper towel as a sling – Sling.
– Oh, into the sauce. – Right into the sauce.
– I like it. – [Keith] Just want to stir this together. – That looks delicious.
– So now we can transfer this over to our baking dish. Now I have a 9 by 13 baking dish. Okay. Green beans are nicely
coated with our sauce. – It smells so good.
– So good. So at this point, you could stop and you can make this casserole ahead. You can have the green beans
and the sauce together, and you would wanna refrigerate
the topping separately. And then you can put the two
together whenever you want to, the next day or two days down the road. – I love it.
– It’s a great make ahead. Now, our topping. Don’t wanna press this down. You want to keep it
kind of nice and loose. So we’re gonna put this
in a 425 degree oven, middle rack for 15 minutes. The topping will get brown.
It’ll bubble around the edges. It’ll be delicious. (Julia gasps)
Doesn’t that look great? – [Julia] Look at the browning on that. – Smells wonderful. – Yeah. And you can
see the little bubbling around the edges in the corners. – Yeah. We’re gonna let this
hang out for five minutes before we try it. It’s a
little too hot right now. – (laughs) Okay. – Five minutes is up. It’s time to eat our green bean casserole. – I’ve been waiting. I’m eager to see what’s
under those crumbs. Oh! It’s not swimming in it,
but there’s plenty of sauce. Mm. That sauce tastes like mushrooms. – It’s really velvety, the sauce is. I mean, and it coats the green beans. It’s not too heavy.
It’s a perfect balance. – And the green beans
are completely tender, but they’re still nice and bright green and they taste fresh. And that topping of buttery breadcrumbs with the canned onions? Brilliant. – [Narrator] For full episodes of your favorite cooking shows, head over to ATK’s full
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