Garlic Green Beans with Brown Butter

Garlic green beans with brown butter are a perfect vegetable! This simple and tasty veggie side dish goes with so many entrees and it is easy to make using fresh or frozen beans. Even your kids will love these flavorful vegetables!

Garlic Green Beans with Brown Butter recipe

We absolutely love eating fresh green beans in our house. We eat frozen or canned green beans a lot too, but usually we're eating those when I've neglected to think about what will go with our entree!

Fresh green beans just have a completely different experience about them from canned green beans. I really think that they have the best flavor!

I remember working at the restaurant in college where we served haricot verts which felt super fancy but really was just the French word for green beans. That's probably where I discovered how much better fresh green beans are than canned.

Nowadays, I love to dress up green beans with other flavors, like this green bean seasoning. But one of my absolute favorite ways is with browned butter and garlic. Honestly, you really can't get any better than this delicious recipe!

Why You'll Love this Recipe

There are so many reasons to love a simple dish like garlic green beans. They're the best kind of recipe:

• Studded with garlic and a brown butter sauce, incredible side dish looks gorgeous on a plate and is perfect for the dinner table.
• These garlic green beans are so flavorful and unlike any green beans you've had before! So much garlicky goodness!
• Not including salt and pepper, you only need three ingredients to make these roasted green beans!
• They make a stunning side dish — perfect for holiday gatherings like a Thanksgiving dinner, yet easy enough for a quick weeknight dinner.

Ingredients

Garlic green beans made with brown butter are so easy, and you only need three ingredients besides salt and pepper! You can get everything to make them at your local grocery store:

• fresh green beans
• unsalted butter
• garlic
• salt and pepper

Green beans

Fresh green beans are the star of this show. Get them from your grocery store or a local farmers market. For nights when you may need something yummy in a pinch, you can totally use frozen green beans for this recipe.

I doesn't matter whether they are chopped or french green beans. This just means they're kept whole and may be slightly skinnier than cut green beans.

Unsalted butter

You can make brown butter with salted butter or unsalted. However, I prefer unsalted so that I can salt level myself.

Also, Cook's Illustrated mentions that it's a lot easier to burn salted butter when you're trying to brown it. It also produces more foam than unsalted butter as it melts, which makes it hard to tell how much the color has changed. They also said:

So while it’s possible to brown salted butter, there will be no browned-milk-solid flavor benefit from it and it’s actually more difficult to avoid burning salted butter compared with unsalted. The best bet is to stick with using unsalted butter.

If you need an option for vegan brown butter, check out this awesome recipe.

Garlic

Freshly minced garlic will give you the best flavor! If you have fresh cloves and a garlic mincer, mince it yourself. It will have a more fresh flavor and create the best garlicky green beans. You will need about three cloves.

If you are like me and need a shortcut now and again, the canned minced garlic is a godsend and will work well in this recipe. You will need about a tablespoon.

Feel free to measure with your heart if you like a lots of garlic flavor!

How to Prepare Green Beans

Cooking always makes me feel like I'm part of an older time period. I'm not usually one of those people who feels like they were born in the wrong generation or anything, but when it comes to cooking, I definitely have an old-school style.

One thing I absolutely love doing is trimming green beans.

You could totally just cut off the stems (the firmer pieces on one end of the green bean that the beans grew from), but I love the process of breaking that stem off.

It takes just a handful of minutes and gives your water time to start boiling, anyway. But if you're looking for something quick and easy, go ahead and chop off the firm ends with a knife.

Place the green beans into the water and let them boil for about 10 minutes, or until fork tender. Remove and drain well in a strainer.

What is Brown Butter?

Brown butter is almost like butter that you forgot was melting in a pan and is almost burnt but still viable. That may sound totally crazy, but it brings out so much flavor in both the butter and garlic.

Essentially, it cooks the milk solids in the butter, making them nice and toasty — giving the butter an almost nutty flavor and aroma.

In other words, magic is what happens when brown butter is created!

Brown butter can be used in pasta dishes like this brown butter gnocchi or baked goods like brown butter rice krispie treats.

How to make Brown Butter Garlic Sauce

Once your green beans have been boiled in water and are cooked, you'll make your sauce which is simply butter and garlic.

After you've poured out your green beans, leave them aside and melt a few tablespoons of butter on medium heat.

As it's melting use a spatula or a spoon to move the butter around the pan, scraping any pieces of butter that might've browned and crisped up at the bottom of your pan. Once the butter starts to darken, add your minced garlic in and stir frequently so that the garlic doesn't burn.

Once the garlic is fragrant, add the green beans back to the pan and toss to coat in this delicious secret sauce! Add salt and pepper, toss, and serve.

What to Serve with Garlic Green Beans

Some of my favorite entrees to go with easy side dish are pan seared apple pork tenderloin, pistachio dijon mustard chicken or air fryer shake and bake chicken breast.

I also recommend serving these side dishes:

• shredded cheesy potatoes
• sweet potato kale sauté
• goat cheese rosemary drop biscuits

Easy garlic green beans also make the perfect Thanksgiving side dish or the start of an incredibly yummy green bean casserole!

In fact, my friend Erin has a recipe for brown butter turkey that is to-die-for. If you like these green beans, you should totally consider this for your holiday table!

How to Store Leftover Garlic Green Beans

Place leftover sauteed garlic green beans into an airtight container and allow to cool completely. Store in the fridge for 3-4 days.

To reheat, place in a large skillet with a little butter if needed. That's one of my favorite things about this fresh green bean recipe! It stores well and reheats well too.

Tips for Success

Here are a few tips to make these sautéed green beans absolutely perfect:

• Make sure the garlic does not burn as you brown it! Use a spoon or silicone spatula to continously move it around so that it becomes fragrant and golden brown, but not burnt.
• Don't overcook your green beans! Once they're fork tender, they're good to go.
• Coat the green beans well in the sauce. You can use a spoon or spatula to ensure every green bean is coated in garlicky brown butter.

FAQ

More Side Dish Recipes

• Grilled Asparagus
• Easy Drop Biscuits
• Healthy Sweet Potato Casserole
• Roasted Root Vegetables