Here’s our easy sautéed green beans recipe made with the most delicious garlic butter. You can make these beans in about 15 minutes! Our family loves these tasty, perfectly cooked green beans!
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Do You Need to Blanch Green Beans For This Recipe?
Blanching green beans means cooking them for a short time in boiling water until they are flavorful, tender, and bright green. As soon as they are tender, the beans are cooled down in ice water to stop the cooking. While blanching is an excellent way to cook green beans for salads and other dishes, in the case of this simple sautéed recipe, blanching isn’t necessary.
Instead of blanching the beans, we streamline the cooking steps. The method isn’t all that different from when making our sautéed zucchini, sautéed Brussels sprouts, sautéed cabbage, or this sautéed bok choy.
If you were looking for a roasted version, here’s our recipe for roasted green beans.
Here are the basic steps we follow for perfectly sautéed green beans:
How to Sauté Green Beans
We like our beans to be bright green with a few blistered spots on the outside and tender and flavorful in the middle.
Cook the beans with a bit of oil and salt in a wide skillet. Toss the beans around every couple of minutes. We aren’t looking for completely tender beans at this point, just a few blistered spots.
Pour in a small amount of liquid — like water or stock — and cover. Cook, covered until the beans are tender (about 2 minutes).
Uncover and then add flavor with minced garlic, butter (regular or vegan butter), and any other spices you love. Toss around for a minute or two, and then serve!
More green beans recipes:
What to Serve With Green Beans?
This green beans recipe is fast, so we make it often! Here are a few of our family’s favorite dishes to serve them with:
Garlic Butter Sauteed Green Beans
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Here’s our easy sautéed green beans recipe made with the most delicious garlic butter. You can make these beans in about 15 minutes! Our family loves these tasty, perfectly cooked green beans!
In the recipe below, we have shared a basic recipe as well as an optional step to finish the beans with a garlic butter (delicious).
Makes 4 servings
Watch Us Make the Recipe
You Will Need
Basic Sautéed Green Beans
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 pound green beans, stem ends snapped off
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/4 cup water or stock
Lemon wedges, for serving
Optional Garlic Butter
1 tablespoon butter or vegan butter
3 medium garlic cloves, minced, about 1 tablespoon
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
Directions
1Heat oil in a wide skillet over medium-high heat, and then add the green beans and a 1/4 teaspoon of salt.
2Cook until you begin to see a few blistered spots, about 5 minutes. As they cook, keep tossing so that all the beans have a chance to hit the bottom of the skillet.
3Pour in the water (or stock), and then cover the skillet with a lid or if the pan you are using does not have a lid, tent some aluminum foil over the pan. Cook, covered, for 2 minutes.
4Uncover the skillet, turn the heat down to medium-low, and then continue to cook until any liquid left in the pan has evaporated. Serve or if you are making the garlic butter green beans, stir in the butter, garlic, lemon zest, and black pepper. Cook, stirring the garlic around the pan for one minute. Serve.
Adam and Joanne’s Tips
- Nutrition Facts: The nutrition facts provided below are estimates. We have used the USDA database to calculate approximate values. The garlic butter is included in the calculations.
If you make this recipe, snap a photo and hashtag it #inspiredtaste — We love to see your creations on Instagram and Facebook! Find us: @inspiredtaste
Nutrition Per Serving
Serving Size
1/4 of the recipe
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Calories
74
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Total Fat
4.3g
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Saturated Fat
2g
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Cholesterol
7.6mg
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Sodium
153mg
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Carbohydrate
8.8g
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Dietary Fiber
3.2g
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Total Sugars
3.7g
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Protein
2.3g
