Italian Green Beans Recipe

This Italian Green Beans Recipe uses fresh green beans, pungent red onions, and nutty walnuts to make a perfectly balanced simple side dish. In fact, it's a perfect side dish to make in a pinch using mostly ingredients you have on hand.

This Green Bean recipe was inspired by the green bean salad my grandmother used to make all the time for birthdays, Sunday dinners, and other family gatherings.

The most memorable part of her string bean salad was always the red onion, which became more and more pickled as they soaked in the simple dressing. So in creating this recipe, I made sure to incorporate those delicious vinegar-soaked onions that really make it SUCH a great recipe.

How to Make Italian Green Beans

Just like some of the best Italian recipes, these Easy Italian Green Beans rely on high-quality ingredients and good techniques to get the most out of just 5 simple ingredients. (plus salt and pepper)

Ingredients

• 1 pound of regular string beans, ends removed, cut in half. You can also use haricot verts, white string beans, or a combination. Another option is to use Romano Beans, which are native to Italy. But these are less readily available in the US.
• ½ cup of walnuts, toasted and finely chopped
• ⅓ cup of diced red onion
• ⅛ cup red wine vinegar
• ⅛ cup extra virgin olive oil
• ½ teaspoon of Kosher Salt, plus more to taste
• ½ teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper
• An Ice Bath (ice and water in a large bowl)

See Recipe Card for quantities

Instructions

This Italian Green Beans Recipe only takes about 30 minutes including prep time and can easily be scaled up for dinner parties. It's truly just so easy.

Step 1: Preparation. Bring a medium pot of salted water to a boil. Meanwhile, finely the dice red onions and combine with the vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Prepare the green beans. Wash them, remove and discard the ends, and cut each bean in half.

Toast the walnuts in a small skillet for 2-3 minutes just until fragrant and lightly toasted. Then finely dice them and set them aside.

Step 2: Blanch the Green Beans. boil them for 2-3 minutes then transfer them to an ice bath to shock them.

Step 3: Strain and dry the Green Beans. Make sure to get all of the excess water off the string beans! This step is really important as wet string beans can water down the delicious red wine vinaigrette. Use paper towels to help get them as dry as possible.

Step 4: Assemble. Add the dried green beans to a medium mixing bowl with the onion dressing and walnuts. Toss everything together with tongs. Taste for seasoning and adjust as needed. Sometimes I add a splash more vinegar and a pinch of salt at the last minute. 

Top Tips:

• The red onion-infused vinaigrette is so flavorful, and can be used to dress many cold salads such as pasta salad, and my Beet and Farro Salad with Grapefruit Dressing. The onions flavor the dressing, the dressing flavors the onions, and it's a win-win situation.
• Not every Italian Green Bean Salad calls for walnuts. However, I find that finely chopped toasted walnuts make an excellent addition to many salads. Toasting the walnuts brings out more of their nutty flavor, making the entire salad more flavorful. Finely chopping the walnuts binds the oniony vinaigrette to he green beans. Without them, the dressing would all seep to the bottom of the bowl.
• Blanching is a cooking method in which you cook the food item in boiling water and then transfer it to an ice bath to stop it from cooking. The ice bath also maintains the vegetable's bright green color and snappy-tender texture.
• Cook the string beans for just 2-3 minutes before transferring them to an ice bath. Do not over cook them!

What to serve them with

Eat these nutty Italian Green beans with a heartier main dish like chicken cutlets, pan seared pork chops, eggplant Milanese, a or a simply grilled steak.

This recipe is also a great alternative to green bean casserole as part of a Thanksgiving meal. It's lighter, brighter, and has a good amount of acidity to contrast all the other creamy Thanksgiving foods.

Substitutions

This Italian Green Beans Recipe is such a crowd-pleaser, but you may need to change it to suit certain dietary restrictions.

• Nut free: If you are allergic to walnuts, you can substitute with pretty much any other nut. If you are allergic to all nuts, substitute with finely grated pecorino or parmesan cheese. These two ingredients share a similar nutty flavor and binding quality.

Variations

• Make it spicy by adding a pinch of red pepper flakes
• Make it garlicky by adding a couple smashed cloves of garlic to the onion/dressing mixture. You can remove them just before serving so no one accidentally eats a piece of raw garlic. (Unless, of course, they want to)
• You can replace the red vinegar with lemon juice or white balsamic vinegar to change up the flavor profile a bit. A combination of two types of acids is always delicious too.
• Add a spoonful of leftover tomato sauce you may have in your refrigerator. Tomato sauce adds a lovely umami burst of flavor to salad dressings. This certainly changes the vibe of the recipe, but it's certainly delicious.

How to Store Leftover Italian Green Beans

Simply place the leftovers in an airtight container and refrigerate them for up to a week. These green beans will continue to soak up the dressing as they sit in the fridge, so the leftovers are extra flavorful.

Italian Green Beans Recipe

Print