Green bean salad: vinaigrette instead of buttered breadcrumbs
In Poland green beans are most often served hot, with butter and breadcrumbs. A pity, because cold, in a mustard vinaigrette, they are a different vegetable altogether — firm, brightly green and far lighter. There is one non-negotiable condition: blanching in salted water at a rolling boil, then ice. Overcooked beans are olive and limp, and in a salad there is nowhere to hide that.
Your own work in that: 23 min.
- Blanching 15 min
- Vinaigrette 8 min
- Settling 15 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneTrim the beans
Cut off only the stalk end; leave the thin tail — it looks better and there is no need to remove it. Keep the pods whole: cut into pieces they take on water and lose their crunch.
Ingredients: 600 g green beans · 4 pcs eggs · ½ pcs red onion · ½ bunch parsley · 1 tbsp salt
TipOlder beans have a tough string along one side. Snap a pod in half: if a string trails behind the break, pull it off, or it stays in the mouth like thread.
Stalk ends only, pods left wholeBoil the eggs
Boil the eggs 9 minutes from the boil and transfer them to cold water. Peel and quarter them only just before serving — cut early, they dry out and lose colour.
Blanch in water at a rolling boil
Bring a large pan of water to the boil and salt it generously — a tablespoon per 2 litres, like pasta water. Add the beans and cook uncovered 5 minutes from the return to the boil. They should be firm, with slight resistance to the tooth, never soft.
Ingredients: 600 g green beans · 4 pcs eggs · ½ pcs red onion · ½ bunch parsley · 1 tbsp salt
TipUncovered, because some of the volatile acids the vegetable releases then escape with the steam. Under a lid they condense back in and speed up the change from green to olive.
Five minutes, uncovered, well saltedStraight into iced water
Drain and immediately tip into a bowl of cold water and ice for 3 minutes. That stops the cooking at once and fixes the colour. Then dry them thoroughly on a tea towel, because wet beans will not take a vinaigrette.
Ice at once, then dry them properlyShake the vinaigrette
Put the vinegar in a jar with the mustard, honey, crushed garlic, salt and pepper, shake, then add the oil and shake for 20 seconds. You get a smooth, creamy emulsion that clings to the pods instead of running to the bottom.
Ingredients: 5 tbsp olive oil · 2 tbsp white wine vinegar · 1½ tsp Dijon mustard · 1 tsp honey · 1 clove garlic · ½ tsp salt · ½ tsp freshly ground pepper
Twenty seconds in a jar and it emulsifiesToss and let it stand
Toss the beans with the vinaigrette and the thinly sliced onion, and leave 15 minutes at room temperature. Arrange on a platter before serving, add the egg quarters and scatter with parsley. Serve at room temperature, not straight from the fridge.
Ingredients: 600 g green beans · 4 pcs eggs · ½ pcs red onion · ½ bunch parsley · 1 tbsp salt
Room temperature, eggs on top
Before you start
As a main course
Add a tin of tuna, some olives and boiled potatoes and you have something very close to a niçoise, in its Polish August version.
From frozen beans
Add frozen beans straight from the bag to boiling water and cook 3 minutes, not five. They have already been blanched, so five minutes overcooks them.
With toasted almonds
Flaked almonds toasted in a dry pan and scattered over before serving. A nod to French green beans with almonds (haricots verts aux amandes), only served cold.
How long it keeps
Up to two days in the fridge, ideally without the eggs — add those fresh just before serving. The acid in the vinaigrette gradually dulls the green, so the next day the beans will be more olive, but the flavour even deeper — they have taken the vinaigrette all the way through.
