Milk Green Beans Bring Me Back To Summers On My Great-Grandmother’s Farm

While other kids were sleeping in and hitting the lake for a relaxing summer day, I was getting up before dawn, heading to the barn with my great-grandmother to feed the pigs and chickens, and trailing around the enormous garden to see what needed tending or harvesting. I still remember the green beans in late summer — we picked them, loaded our aprons up, and then headed to the porch swing for snapping in the shade. 

My great-grandmother, Nanny as we all called her, showed me how to quickly prep the beans, amassing buckets of them as we swung together. The trick is to get a quick, clean snap on both ends and keep moving through the pile, never slowing, it almost becomes automated after you’ve trimmed enough. 

Struggling to carry the bucket, which was ¾ of my height, we moved our bounty to the pantry where Nanny would asses which beans were for cooking and freezing, and which ones went to the pickle pot. The rows and rows of canned preserves, bread n’ butter pickles, and jars of dandelion wine in the darkened space felt like my own personal candy store. We did quick pickles, made jam, and dried herbs in that room behind the kitchen with a pieced-together burlap sack curtain for the door.

With our wares separated and processed, we moved to the stove and Nanny put on a large pot of water to boil. She explained we would blanch the green beans quickly in the boiling water, just to get them started, and then shock them in an ice bath to stop the cooking and keep the bright green color. I marveled at the chemistry of it all. 

Then she did the thing that forever changed my course with green beans — she returned them to the pot, lowered the fire, and poured a quart of milk we gathered that morning along with a half-cup of freshly churned butter in with the beans. A couple of tablespoons of table salt and the bath was complete. Now came the steeping.

As the beans soaked in the warm milk concoction, bits of milkfat started to accumulate on the skin. After about 30 minutes, Nanny moved the heavy pot to the other end of the stove and scooped the beans out into her swoop-shaped milk glass bowl for serving. Those beans remain etched in my memory and they are still the best I’ve ever had. The quick blanch and then luxurious bath in whole milk, butter, and salt lent a crisp texture, and sweet cream flavor without masking the taste of the fresh green bean.

Over the years my family’s holiday meals have changed as members tried vegetarianism, and new partners were added that brought their traditions, but one thing that never changes is milk green beans. It was the first recipe my kids asked for when they moved out and it is on repeat when we gather—they know when they show up their job is to snap the beans. 

Many people have passed through my dining room, especially when I had the restaurant and brought all the stray workers who didn’t have a place for the holidays and they always asked how I get the green beans so tender and flavorful. It remains my most requested recipe.

Even though I moved to the South over three decades ago and know the technique of using ham hocks, bacon, and other meats for flavoring, I still make my green beans with milk and butter, just like Nanny. She passed when I was 20, just a year to the day after my father, and every time I make a pot of beans, I’m transported right back to those summers on her farm, learning how to grow and prepare food.