Green Beans With A Mountain Of Panko

My latest green bean side dish invention

Today’s dish has me deep in the throes of a green-bean-munching obsession. It’s supposed to be a vegetable side, but to me it’s an enormous pile of snacking-worthy food that you literally cannot stop eating once you start. Let me paint the picture for you. There’s a good amount of unremarkable looking blanched green beans. (Nobody is jumping up and down at this stage.) They’re smothered with a generous amount of billowy tahini yogurt sauce (people start to perk up). Then an enormous mound of golden salty parmesan panko is piled on top (people start gathering).

Then said people dig in. And they quickly realise that the sauce acts as a glue so you get a generous amount of parmesan-panko crunch with every bite of green bean…… If every vegetable side dish was this amazing, EVERYBODY would eat their greens!!!

Ingredients

Here’s what you need to make your new favourite green beans recipe!

Green beans

Yes! You need green beans for this recipe!! 😂

whipped tahini yogurt sauce

This is my current favourite sauce that I’ve been using excessively on “everything”, such as the recent Sweet Potato Steaks and Pan Fried Eggplant. “Whipped” sounds fancy for a sauce that takes 20 seconds to whisk!! 😂 I use the name as a clue of the texture which is more light and fluffy than a basic yogurt sauce. It’s almost like soft whipped cream.

Plain yoghurt – Not sweetened, and not flavoured. Tahini – Paste made with sesame seeds. Usually found in the health food aisle at grocery stores. Use hulled tahini (more common), not un-hulled which is darker and more bitter. The jar label will specify which it is. Use Chinese sesame paste as a sub if you have leftovers from other recipes I’ve shared, like this one or this one! Lemon – For tangy lemon flavour. Garlic – Because it makes it tastier. Finely grate it using a microplane so you don’t have big lumps in the sauce.

CRUNCHY TOPPING

Parmesan and panko breadcrumbs fried up in olive oil until golden and crunchy. You know it’s gonna be good!

Panko breadcrumbs – A Japanese breadcrumb favoured for the extra-crispy coating it gives crumbed foods. You can buy it at most big supermarkets (Coles, Woolworths) in the Asian foods section and Asian stores. Substitute with regular breadcrumbs if you can’t find it. Parmesan – Grate your own (better flavour) or use store bought pre-grated (the sandy type). Olive oil – For pan frying until golden.

How to make Green Beans with a Mountain of Panko

The recipe in my working files is articulately written up as:

Beans – Boil, drain, cool, toss. Tahini sauce – Whisk, microwave 20 sec, whisk again. Panko – Mix, pan fry.

I did promise you easy! 🙂 Here are step photos (and a few more words on each of those steps!).

Preparing & cooking green beans

Obviously pros should blow right past this section (or read it and share your opinions in the comments section below!).

Everything else

Make-ahead dream

As mentioned from the outset, this dish came about because I was after a new green bean side dish that could be prepared ahead but with an element of “wow” factor. It’s coming up to holiday season, we can do better than plain steamed beans!! 😂 No microwave? Set the bowl over a saucepan filled with 1″/2.5 cm of simmering water. Then whisk – as the mixture warms up slightly, it will transform into the whipped cream texture. So the beauty of this recipe is that it can be entirely prepared ahead then assembled in a matter of minutes. It’s a dish that is intended to be served at room temperature, so there’s no reheating to be done. Here’s how to make ahead: Serve as a vegetable side dish. Though as I mentioned earlier, make it once, and you’ll see the snacking potential as everyone grabs the beans and munches on them like french fries! – Nagi x