I needed a side to serve with the pork Marsala I made earlier this week. It had to be something that wouldn’t clash with the Marsala wine sauce and preferably a green vegetable. This recipe for green beans wrapped in bacon sounded like it would do the job nicely. Plus bacon! I have yet to find a dish with bacon that I don’t like.
Pretty little bundles of bacon wrapped French “green beans” known as Haricot verts which are longer and thinner than the typical American green bean. Of course, American green beans will work just fine here too.
The Ingredients
With only 5 ingredients, this recipe was so easy to shop for. I had the seasonings, so all I needed to buy was the bacon and green beans. I chose regular green beans for this recipe since the haricots verts were more than double for the same quantity. Splurging on haricots verts would be an option if I was having guests, but this was a regular weeknight meal for me, and the recipe said either type of bean would work.
The Process
This recipe took a total of 38 minutes from start to finish. Most of that was waiting for the water to boil so I could blanch the green beans. I had more than enough time to trim the beans and slice the bacon in half while I waited. After 3 minutes in the boiling water, I plunged the beans into a large bowl of ice water then drained and dried them.
The next step was making the bundles of green beans. There are about 80 beans in a pound (yes, I counted), so I made 8 bundles of 10 beans. The recipe says to season the beans then spray them with olive oil, but I noticed the salt wasn’t sticking at all. I decided to give my beans a spray with olive oil first, then I added the salt, pepper, and garlic powder. That kept the seasonings from falling off, and all I had to do was pop everything into the oven for 16 minutes.
