A warm green bean salad made with seasonal string beans, very tender with a slight bite. Served with extra-virgin olive oil, fresh lemon, and a rustic yet luxuriously creamy garlic sauce made from stale bread!
Dishes like this warm string bean salad have been staples in Greek homes for many years. The simplest and healthiest of comfort foods. Garden-fresh, seasonal, and on a budget, what Greek cuisine is all about.
Table Of Contents
In Greece, we eat string beans the same way we eat Vlita (Amaranth Greens). As a warm salad, it's either served straight from the pot or left to cool to room temperature.
The warm green beans are drizzled with a generous amount of extra-virgin olive oil and served with fresh lemon or red wine vinegar.
Skordostoupi: A Greek Garlic Sauce
Another classic Greek topping for these delicious beans is garlic sauce. You can either pulse garlic with plenty of olive oil in a small food processor (or, as old grannies used to do, cream it in a pestle and mortar), or make skordostoupi.
Skordostoupi is an old-fashioned garlic sauce made with stale bread. The process is simple. You soak the crustless stale bread in water, then squeeze it, and pulse it with garlic, olive oil, and vinegar until smooth and creamy. The result is a delicious, strong-flavored garlic sauce.
The String Beans Variety
String beans or pole string beans are tender, round green beans. In Greece, they are called Ampelofasoula. They also have 100 more different names since each area in Greece seems to have a local name for these delicious beans.
They're best eaten when they're early harvested, still a bit thin and crisp with a deep green color. Because the longer they sit on the vines without being harvested, they develop strings and turn a lighter green color. They also become rounder since the beans inside them fully grow.
In that case, you can pull the strings when you cut the tips of each bean with a knife; they will easily come off.
Can I Use Other Green Beans?
Of course you can! It's best to use round green beans that are better suited for a salad than flat green beans.
I wouldn't suggest using frozen green beans, however. They're not as flavorful when you simply boil them like we do here.
How Long To Cook
That's entirely up to you! It really depends on how soft you like your beans to be. In Greece, green beans are cooked until very soft with a slight bite, close to the point they start to lose their vibrant color.
Serve With
Warm green salads like this one, for Greeks, are usually a side dish to fish and seafood dishes, such as a Grilled Sea Bream, pan-fried fish like this Pan-Seared Red Snapper, Gavros Tiganitos (fried anchovies), or Fried Calamari.
Recipe
Healthy String Beans Salad
Ingredients
- 500 grams (1.1 pounds) string beans
- coarse sea salt
- freshly ground pepper
- lemon wedges to serve with
For The Garlic Sauce:
- 70 grams (2.5 ounces) crustless stale bread
- 5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil + extra to drizzle on top
- 3 large garlic cloves
- 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar or fresh lemon juice
- ⅓ teaspoon sea salt
Instructions
- Prepare the beans. Cut the tips of the beans and then cut them in half or into three, depending on how long they are.
- Soak the stale bread in water. Once it softens, squeeze it very well to remove all the water and keep it aside.
- Bring plenty of water to a boil and season with a generous amount of coarse sea salt.
- Boil the beans until tender to your liking.
- Drain the beans in a strainer.
- Pulse all of the ingredients for the garlic sauce, including the bread, in a small food processor until smooth and creamy.
- Serve the beans warm or close to room temperature. Drizzle with plenty of extra virgin olive oil and add the garlic sauce on top. Top with freshly ground pepper and serve with some lemon wedges on the side.
I've been making this Greek staple for decades. Such a tasty, healthy dish.
Make this, and you'll never go near canned or frozen string beans.