It’s casserole season and with the holidays around the corner, it’s time to think about classics like green bean casserole. Personally, I’ve always loved it. It’s one of my favorite sides at Thanksgiving, and everyone knows that the sides are the whole point of the Thanksgiving meal. Still, I know that the dish can be contentious — it’s mostly a texture thing, it seems — and that many people have tried to improve upon Campbell’s original recipe. As a GBC fan who’s happy enough with the classic, could I be swayed by another take?
Here’s what I’m looking for in a green bean casserole: lots of crispy onions or other fried alliums, a very savory flavor, a little mush (isn’t this the whole point of a casserole?), and green beans that also still have some bite to them. A general cream-of-mushroom-soup vibe is crucial, in my opinion, but I’m agnostic on the necessity of actual mushrooms.
After testing four different green bean casserole recipes, from old-school Campbell’s to deconstructed modern variations, here are my findings about what’s worth bringing to the holiday table, or when other techniques and takes might be helpful.
Dorcas Reilly
In 1955, Dorcas Reilly invented green bean casserole — originally called “green bean bake” — while working for Campbell’s. The dish was intended to be quick, affordable, and accessible, using ingredients people already had. Reilly’s recipe, which calls for just five ingredients, is the standard by which every other green bean casserole, and riff on it, must be judged.
The recipe is, above all, easy. You simply toss together a can of cream of mushroom soup, milk, soy sauce, cooked green beans, and French’s fried onions in the dish you’ll both bake and serve the casserole in. Put it in the oven, stir partway through, top it with more onions, and you’re done. The only real work is cooking the beans, but this can be simplified by either using canned or frozen beans, or microwave-steaming a bag of them. This step really dictates the texture of the final casserole, though: those made with canned beans generally turn out softer than the ones made with steamed or blanched beans.
Everything about this recipe is classic. Its flavor is deeply savory in the way that cream of mushroom soup makes everything better. But the thing that really clinches it for me is the mix of crispy and crispy-gone-soggy fried onions, the result of stirring some in at the beginning and then adding more as topping later. As much as I love some snap in my green beans, I enjoy a little mushiness in the final dish, and this step helps provide that range of textures. Satisfied enough with this version, I was curious how the other recipes would stack up.
Jeanine Donofrio and Jack Mathews, Love & Lemons
Generally when people “upgrade” green bean casserole, they make everything from scratch. As with homemade Oreos, however, this approach provokes a little skepticism on my part. Love & Lemons’ recipe reworks GBC by sauteing the mushrooms and then turning them into a roux-based sauce that’s flavored with tamari, garlic, thyme, Dijon, and Parmesan. This is layered with blanched green beans (the recipe calls for a four-minute cook, which results in a pretty lively bean) and then finished with homemade crispy onions.
What drew me to this recipe was its approach to simplified crispy onions. I imagine that frying onions like French’s would put a lot of people off, especially on a hectic day like Thanksgiving. Instead, this recipe calls for a hands-off, oven-baked method involving tossing sliced onions with oil, flour, panko breadcrumbs, and salt and baking them until crispy. (You can do this step the day before if oven space is at a premium when you need to assemble the casserole.) Unlike Campbell’s, this recipe calls for only adding the onions to the top of the dish. Despite the oven hack, it requires some time on the stove in addition to using the oven.
I really liked the crispy onions. I’ll admit that sometimes I find French’s onions, with their thick coating and generous amount of salt, a little cloying. By comparison, these were lighter and no less delicious; I still scooped up a bunch as a snack. The casserole itself felt much more like a green bean and mushroom casserole than just green bean; while I like mushrooms, mushroom haters might not be so into this. Given the number of flavoring elements in the sauce, however, I was surprised to find its flavor a little boring compared to the canned soup (which is, of course, juiced up with MSG and yeast extract). And as much as I liked the thick onion topping, I would use Campbell’s double-onion technique if I were to make this again.
Alison Roman, A Newsletter
Alison Roman’s take on green bean casserole is like the midpoint between fully from-scratch and Campbell’s. According to the headnote, Roman doesn’t like the “gloopy” nature of canned cream of mushroom soup, so she makes her own base. However, she does love French’s onions, and includes them as a topping.
Like the Love & Lemons recipe, Roman’s calls for some time in front of the stove. First, you cook down some onions. Next, you add a pound of mushrooms and let them brown. Then, you add green beans and let them soften. To this, you add flour, milk, tamari, and garlic, which meld into a thick sauce. You top this with French’s onions and put the whole thing in the oven.
Roman notes that the recipe was developed for an 8-inch skillet but that it might feel a little small, in which case you can transfer everything to a baking dish. I found this size a bit unwieldy, given the amount of ingredients in the recipe, and suspect this was the reason that my mushrooms didn’t sear as much as I would have liked. But the full skillet did look nice on the table and I liked that everything happened in just one pan.
As with the Love & Lemons recipe, Roman’s has a pronounced mushroom presence, but also is big on the flavor of sauteed onions. They lend a nice sweetness and browned complexity to the overall flavor of the dish. I imagine that if you don’t like the crispy-gone-soggy onions in Campbell’s recipe, these might be preferable. I found the texture of this recipe to be the softest of the bunch, and I wanted a little more bite. If I were to make it again, I’d cook the green beans for less time before putting the whole thing in the oven. Also, if you’re really dying to make a fully from-scratch dish, I think the oven-crisped onions from the Love & Lemons recipe would work well here.
Kendra Vaculin, Bon Appétit
I also decided to try a really non-traditional option, since I know a lot of people don’t love green bean casserole but still feel pressured by tradition to have something like it on the table. This take from Bon Appétit is like a deconstructed green bean casserole. One of its sells, its developer Kendra Vaculin explains, is that it requires no oven space, which is helpful when you’ve got a turkey in there, plus pies to bake. Since the recipe comes together quickly on the stove, it can be assembled right before a big holiday meal.
First, you blanch the green beans. Then, you lightly fry thinly sliced shallots, scoop them out with a slotted spoon, and cook mushrooms in the pan’s remaining oil. The shallots are supposed to be frizzled, brown, and a little stringy, not coated with flour or battered as in the other recipes. Once the mushrooms are browned, you add the beans, followed by butter and red wine vinegar. You plate the mixture and finish it with the crispy shallots and grated Parm. It’s very easy and, I imagine, a relief during an intensive day of Thanksgiving cooking.
I loved the life that was left in these green beans and overall, this dish had the most varied and interesting textures. The mushrooms really shine too, both in flavor and texture. The combination of vinegar and butter didn’t at all resemble the creaminess of green bean casserole, but it was rich and had an unexpected brightness that I would find welcome on a holiday table. Though the GBC loyalists would likely not be the most satisfied by this one, I think it would be a great, lighter option for holiday meals with guests who aren’t as strict about what has to be on the table. That being said, it would also be delicious for a regular dinner.
The Winner: Campbell’s
Personally, I think Campbell’s still wins out, especially if you’re weighing ease, accessibility, and end result. That it takes so few ingredients and such relatively little effort to have something so comforting is really important, especially when the dish so often is a part of a more involved spread.
However, my taste-test partner — who is, in general, less keen on green bean casserole than I am — preferred Alison Roman’s recipe for its deeper, more balanced flavor. Roman’s recipe certainly is good, especially for people who feel some sort of hesitance toward cream of mushroom soup, but to me, it felt too fancy and in need of my attention, and therefore didn’t hit the same nostalgic notes. Sometimes, it’s all about going back to basics.
Additional photo credit: green bean casserole photos by Bettina Makalintal
