Grandma’s Recipes – Southern Green Beans

If you have never heard of the proverbial southern way of cooking green beans then you might not know how happy I was to actually find this recipe written down! My grandmother was from Alabama and I grew up in the south so this recipe is a piece of my heritage.

Southern green beans are always “cooked to death” until they are limp versions of themselves. My grandmother’s recipe actually says to cook the beans “for hours and hours on end”. 🙂 It’s an old-fashioned way of cooking that reaches back to colonial and plantation days when vegetables were left to cook on the open fire in the kitchen house in great iron pots until they were needed.

Now days, I like my veggies a little crisper and that is very easy to do with this recipe. You might not get the authentic flavor of Southern cooked green beans if you don’t cook them for as long, but they will still be delicious. If you want to cook them for hours on end though that is fine too. I can attest that they are very good and melt in your mouth delicious that way too 🙂 If you don’t want to use the bacon or bacon grease just leave it out and add a little butter or oil instead.