I know that we eat green beans a lot around here and often I mention them with our meal plans but it just occurred to me that I’ve never posted the recipe that we use most often. You can use this recipe for just about any kind of bean. We love our string beans and pole beans like this as well as lima beans!

You can find more green bean recipes HERE.

Mama’s Old-Fashioned Green Beans

Mama’s Old-Fashioned Green Beans

Ingredients:

• about 2-3 lb of fresh or frozen green beans, cleaned, trimmed, and snapped into pieces
• 1/2-1 lb ham hock -see note below
• 1 t. salt – we like to use garlic salt
• water or broth
• chopped onions, optional
• garlic, optional
• 1-2 peeled and diced potatoes, optional
• 1 T. butter, optional

 

Directions:

You want to go ahead and get the ham hock put into a good-sized pan with just enough water or broth to cover it.

Cover and simmer this for about 20-30 minutes.

Add your seasoning and beans to the pot. Add more water or broth, if needed.

If you want to add the onions and garlic you can saute them in the butter and add to the beans at this point. You can also add the diced potatoes now too.

Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce to a simmer, add more water or broth as needed to prevent the beans from drying out.

Let cook for 45 minutes to an hour until tender.

Once the beans are tender you can remove the ham hock from the pan.

Take the meat off the bone and add it back to the beans, stirring gently to mix.

Serve HOT!

You can also dump everything in a crockpot and set it on low for 6-8 hours or on high for 3-4 hours.

Note: If you don’t have a ham hock you can fry up 6-8 pieces of bacon and add the bacon and grease to your beans while they are cooking. You can also use the bacon grease to saute the onions and garlic. Or you can also just skip the meat and cook the beans without it.