How To Cook Fresh Green Beans

Crowd-pleasing, inexpensive, and versatile, there are as many reasons to love fresh green beans as there are ways to enjoy them. Can you even imagine Thanksgiving without the green bean casserole, or a summer cookout where the three-bean salad was missing its freshest, greenest ingredient?

As with most other green veggies, there are several good ways to cook green beans, including steaming, sautéing, oven-roasting, and microwaving. There are even pickled green beans and green bean fries. But the absolute best way to cook fresh green beans—the fastest, most versatile, and nearly foolproof method—is boiling your beans with salt... and lots of it.

Learn how to cook fresh green beans, and discover why salt is the difference between bland and astounding beans.

The Secret to Perfectly Cooked Green Beans

Salt is the key to cooking perfect green beans. We're not talking about the usual sprinkling of salt. Even a palmful isn’t enough. Perfectly crisp-tender beans that retain their bright green color only happen if you boil them in water that’s as salty as seawater.

You may wonder if humble table salt could really make that much of a difference, and if it’s overkill to use so much. But this tried-and-true technique from Harold McGee's 1984 cookbook classic On Food and Cooking has both the support of science —and nearly four decades of successful cooking—to back it up.

How To Prepare Fresh Green Beans

Prepping fresh green beans is a little tedious but simple, and it’s virtually the same for any kind of fresh pole or bush beans or dainty French haricots verts in any shade of green, yellow, or purple: Just rinse them in a colander, and trim the stem ends, along with any browned or broken edges. 

Whole beans are sometimes called for in dishes like Green Beans Almondine or Baked Caprese Chicken With Green Beans and Corn, where they look long and elegant, and are easy enough to spear with a fork. But for most recipes, you’ll want to cut the green beans into more bite-sized one- or two-inch lengths.

The most common way to do this is to cut them in two or three pieces, making straight cuts along the lengths of the beans. But if you’re feeling fancy and want to show off your knife skills, give them the chef-y treatment by cutting them on the bias.

If you want your beans to be perfectly squared off and uniform (say for Grandma’s three-bean salad recipe), you can also trim the tapered, non-stem end. But otherwise, there’s no need. 

That’s all the prep needed for conventional green beans that you’re likely to find at grocery stores. If you’re lucky enough to grow your own heirloom string beans, or if you see them at the farmers' market, these older varieties may require an extra step: While you’re trimming, peel away the tough “strings” that run along one (or sometimes both) sides.

Ingredients for Fresh Green Beans

Another reason this recipe for fresh green beans is so beloved? It requires just three ingredients. Here's what you'll need:

• Green beans: Start with 1 to 1 1/2 pounds of washed and trimmed green beans. Go ahead and cut them into 1- to 2-inch pieces.
• Salt: You can't have salty water without salt.
• Water: We're calling for the precise measurement of water with salt so the water is the perfect level of salty when it's time to cook the beans.

How To Cook Fresh Green Beans 

The general recommendation for perfectly cooked green beans is boiling them in the magic formula of two tablespoons of salt per quart of water. This creates a salinity of three percent, which is about the same concentration of seawater. 

To put it another way: For about a pound of green beans, you’d want to double that base formula and use two quarts of water and 1/4 cup of salt. (Yes, you read that right: a full quarter of a cup.)

The science behind that ratio is this: First, cooking green beans in highly-salted water actually cooks them faster. Not only does that result in your green beans will be ready to eat sooner, but less cooking time means they’ll also retain more of their bright green color.

Second, cooking vegetables in heavily-salted water means that less of the plant’s cells leach out into the water, allowing them to retain more of their natural flavors. 

And while the amount of water may seem like a minor detail, using two quarts of water for about a pound of green beans matters too: A large volume of boiling water means that it will take less time for it to return to a boil once the cold or room-temperature beans are added to the pot. And less cooking time equals greener, perfectly cooked beans. 

But the best part of this saltwater method is the flavor: The salinity seasons the beans, giving them more depth of flavor than other cooking methods.

How Long To Cook Fresh Green Beans

Using this method, average-sized beans that are cut into one- to two-inch pieces will cook up perfectly in five to six minutes.

If you’re using beans that are either bigger or smaller, you’ll want to adjust the timing accordingly. For instance, since haricots verts are much skinnier than standard green beans, they’ll cook in about two or three minutes.

If you have bigger-than-usual conventional green beans or larger heirloom beans from a farmers' market, they may need an extra minute or two to cook through.

Ways To Serve Fresh Green Beans

Once they're cooked, either simply drain the beans and use them right away, or place them in an ice bath to stop the cooking. Then, transfer them to a clean kitchen towel to dry. Either way, taste them before adding any additional salt since they may have absorbed enough from the cooking liquid.

To eat them immediately, you need nothing more than some black or red pepper and a quick toss in butter, olive oil, or a vinaigrette.

But there are seemingly endless ways to get creative with additions like garlic, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and zest, parsley, chives, tarragon, or other herbs, or slivered almonds. Or, try them studded with chopped bacon and shallots, balsamic vinegar and pearl onions, or sprinkled with "everything" seasoning blend or Parmesan.

If instead you’re using this method to prep your green beans as a component for a larger dish, they're ready to add to your pesto pasta, potato salad, soup, or stir-fry whenever you’re ready for them. Cook them just long enough to heat through to maintain freshness. 

How To Store Cooked Green Beans

Cooked green beans will keep in the fridge for up to five days; just make sure they’re thoroughly dried before adding them to an airtight container and storing them in the crisper.

While you can freeze them by adding them in a single layer on a baking sheet, then transferring them to a freezer bag, it’s not recommended since you’ll lose the fresh texture and crispness that’s unique to fresh beans. 

How To Reheat Green Beans

Once green beans are cooked, you only want to warm them through when reheating. That might mean quickly bringing them to temperature in a microwave, or throwing them into a stir-fry, risotto, or soup at the last minute to avoid overcooking.