Green Beans with Bacon

by Sabrina Snyder

Last Update:

15 Comments

5 from 6 votes
4 servings
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Total Time 15 minutes
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Green Beans with Bacon are crisp, savory, and full of flavor, making an easy side dish that’s ready in under 15 minutes. Try making it today!

It’s super easy to make the perfect Veggie side dish with green bean recipes, and in this kitchen, I love making Roasted Green Beans and Sautéed Green Beans for friends and family!

long slender green veggies with cooked bacon in skillet
Recipe Snapshot

Why You’ll Love These Green Beans?

  • Savory, salty, and crispy all in one!
  • Ready in 15 minutes and perfect when you need to feed a large group.

Sabrina’s Green Beans with Bacon Recipe

Green Beans with Bacon is the perfect vegetable to serve as a holiday side dish. This recipe is savory, salty, and crispy all in one. It’s my go-to when I have to feed a large crowd in a short amount of time. I get asked time and time again for this side dish recipe, because of how good it is. As far as green bean recipes go, this is hands down my favorite one.

Recipe Card

Dinner, then Dessert

Green Beans with Bacon Recipe

Green Beans with Bacon are crisp, savory, and full of flavor, making an easy side dish that's ready in under 15 minutes. Try making it today!
Yield 4 servings
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Total Time 15 minutes
Course Dinner
Cuisine American
Author Sabrina Snyder
long slender green veggies with cooked bacon in skillet
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Ingredients
 

  • 1 pound green beans
  • 4 bacon strips , diced
  • 1/8 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/4 cup water , for boiling

Instructions

  • In a large skillet add ¼ cup water and the green beans on high heat and bring to a boil, cooking for 3 minutes.
  • Remove green beans and water, wiping dry with paper towels and add in the bacon, cooking until crisp before adding in the green beans and tossing with bacon and pepper.

Notes

Note: click on times in the instructions to start a kitchen timer while cooking.

Nutrition

Calories: 73kcal | Carbohydrates: 8g | Protein: 5g | Fat: 3g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 1g | Trans Fat: 0.01g | Cholesterol: 8mg | Sodium: 142mg | Potassium: 280mg | Fiber: 3g | Sugar: 4g | Vitamin A: 786IU | Vitamin C: 14mg | Calcium: 44mg | Iron: 1mg

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Chef’s Note

If you want more flavor, try adding fresh garlic or ½ teaspoon powdered garlic, chopped onions, a squeeze of lemon juice while cooking, or a tablespoon of brown sugar to the bacon while it’s cooking. If you add onion and garlic cloves, cook until they start to caramelize, then add the bacon.

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About this Recipe

This is a great recipe to throw together when you need a quick veggie side because it only takes 15 minutes to cook. I always start with really fresh green beans, because this dish is all about that crisp-tender crunch you get from the bean. The bacon fat takes this side dish recipe to a whole new level. The bacon in this recipe is already salty, so there’s no need to add any additional salt. You also don’t need any other added fat due to the bacon grease, which adds a ton of flavor to the green beans. After you blanche the green beans, just cook the bacon over medium-high heat until almost crispy, then add green beans and toss with pepper.

Recipe Tips & Tricks

  • Make sure you use fresh green beans, not canned. The canned beans are already soaking in water, making them too soft to achieve that crispy texture.
  • Trim the ends of your green beans before using them in this recipe to avoid the fibrous woody texture the stem-side of the bean has.
  • Do not use precooked bacon, because it won’t have the bacon grease to cook the other ingredients. It will also add an off flavor to the fresh green beans.

Pairing Suggestions

This vegetable recipe is perfect to serve with your favorite holiday dishes, like Scalloped Potatoes, Roasted Turkey Breast, Ultimate Slow Cooker Mashed Potatoes, and Perfect Garlic Prime Rib.

Frequent Questions

How to blanche green beans?

Boil a large pot of water. Usually I’d salt the water, but the bacon is already salty so we’re skipping this step. Add green beans to the boiling water for a total time of 2-3 minutes. They should be bright green and just starting to get tender when you remove them. Then immediately transfer them to an ice bath to stop the cooking! Once drained, toss them in with the bacon until heated through for perfectly tender-crisp green beans every time.

How do you know if your green beans are fresh?

You can tell if you have fresh green beans by holding the bean and feeling the texture. If your beans bend without snapping, or the bean feels too soft or turns color, they are old and not the best choice for this recipe.

Variations

  • Lightened Dish: If you want to lighten up the dish a bit, cook the bacon then drain off the bacon drippings. Add a drizzle of olive oil to the skillet if you need more fat, but the flavor is going to change a bit.
  • Bacon: Substitute the bacon for pancetta if you have it.
  • Frozen Green Beans: Frozen green beans are already blanched, if you use them just defrost and go straight to the saute step.

Delicious Vegetable Sides

green bean pin image

These photos were in a previous version of this post:

Green beans in a skillet with bacon
green beans in a pan
pinterest collage of green veggies with bacon

About the Author: Sabrina Snyder

Sabrina is a professionally trained Private Chef of over 10 years with ServSafe Manager certification in food safety. She creates all the recipes here on Dinner, then Dessert, fueled in no small part by her love for bacon.

Sabrina Snyder is a professionally trained personal and private chef of over 10 years who is the creator and developer of all the recipes on Dinner, then Dessert.

She is also the author of the cookbook Dinner, then Dessert – Satisfying Meals Using Only 3, 5 or 7 Ingredients, published by Harper Collins.

She started Dinner, then Dessert as a business in her office as a lunch service for her coworkers who admired her lunches before going to culinary school and becoming a full time personal chef and private chef.

As a personal chef Sabrina would cook for families one day a week and cook their entire week of dinners. All grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning was done along with instructions on reheating. As a private chef she cooked for private parties and cooked in family homes in the evenings for families on a nightly basis after working as a personal chef during the day.

Sabrina has been certified as a ServSafe Manager since 2007 and was a longstanding member of the USPCA Personal Chef Association including being on the board of the Washington DC Chapter of Chefs in the US Personal Chef Association when they won Chapter of the year.

As a member of the community of food website creators Sabrina Snyder has spoken at many conferences regarding her experiences as a food writer including the Indulge Food Conference, Everything Food Conference, Haven Food Conference and IACP Annual Food Professionals Conference.

Sabrina lives with her family in sunny California.

See more posts by Sabrina

Dinner, then Dessert, Inc. owns the copyright on all images and text and does not allow for its original recipes and pictures to be reproduced anywhere other than at this site unless authorization is given. Read my disclosure and copyright policy. This post may contain affiliate links.

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Comments

  6. My son would eat bacon with every meal if I’d let him. This is a great way to get him to eat green beans!

    Reply