Green Bean
Crisp, vibrant green beans are a garden staple that bring fresh flavor and a satisfying snap to everyday cooking.
In a nutshell
Green beans — also called string beans or snap beans — are the unripe pods of common bean plants harvested before the seeds mature. They cook quickly, hold their bright color well, and work in everything from simple weeknight sides to classic casseroles. Their mild, grassy flavor makes them one of the most versatile vegetables in the American kitchen.
Nutrition
≈ 4 Calories and 0g fat per tablespoon.
Green beans are remarkably low in calories while delivering a meaningful dose of dietary fiber that supports digestive health and helps you feel satisfied. They’re a good source of vitamin C and vitamin K, the latter being important for bone health and proper blood clotting. Green beans also provide folate, which is essential for cell growth, along with useful amounts of manganese and potassium. Their fat content is negligible. The natural compounds that give them their green color — chlorophyll and carotenoids — carry antioxidant properties that may help reduce cellular stress. Nutrition per 100 g.
Culinary uses & pairings
Green beans are endlessly versatile as a side dish. Blanching them in salted boiling water for two to three minutes, then shocking in ice water, preserves their vivid color and crisp-tender bite — perfect for salads, crudité platters, or a quick toss with butter and garlic. Steaming and roasting at 425°F (220°C) are equally popular; roasting caramelizes the natural sugars and adds a slightly nutty depth that pairs beautifully with almonds or Parmesan.
Beyond simple sides, green beans star in green bean casserole, the beloved Thanksgiving staple made with cream of mushroom soup and crispy fried onions. They hold up well in stir-fries, stews, and Niçoise salads, and they’re a key component in many Southern-style long-simmered dishes with ham hocks. Their firm texture also makes them excellent for pickling, where they become crunchy, tangy spears known as dilly beans.
Pairs well with
Substitutions
Buying & storage
Look for pods that are firm, smooth, and brightly colored — a vivid, uniform green is the best sign of freshness. The pods should snap cleanly when bent rather than bending limply, which is how they earned the name snap beans. Avoid beans with visible bulging seeds, brown spots, or a rubbery feel; those are signs they’ve been on the shelf too long or were harvested late. At farmers markets, you may also find yellow wax beans and purple varieties that taste nearly identical to green beans and are equally worth grabbing when they look fresh.
Varieties
- Blue Lake: The classic American supermarket variety — round pods, mild flavor, and excellent canning quality.
- Haricots verts: The slender French cousin; more tender and delicate, they cook faster and have a slightly more refined flavor.
- Romano (flat bean): Wide, flat pods with a meatier texture and a richer, almost nutty taste; excellent braised or sautéed.
- Yellow wax bean: Identical in flavor to green beans but yellow in color; the color holds reasonably well when cooked, so they’re attractive both raw and lightly blanched.
- Purple green bean: Striking at the farmers market, but the purple color disappears with heat; flavor is nearly the same as standard green beans.
Recipes using green bean
63 recipes across our recipe sites use green bean. A few favorites:
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History & origin
Green beans are native to Mesoamerica and South America, where indigenous peoples had been cultivating Phaseolus vulgaris — the common bean — for thousands of years before European contact. Spanish and Portuguese explorers brought them back to Europe in the 16th century, and they spread rapidly across the continent and into Africa and Asia. In the United States, green beans became a kitchen staple during the 19th century and were one of the first vegetables widely canned for home storage. The dish that cemented their place in American culture — the green bean casserole — was developed at the Campbell Soup Company in 1955, and it remains one of the most-prepared Thanksgiving side dishes in the country to this day.
How it’s made
Green beans are the immature pods of the common bean plant, harvested before the seeds inside have fully developed and dried. Bush varieties grow as compact, self-supporting plants and are typically harvested all at once, making them popular for commercial production. Pole varieties climb trellises and produce pods continuously over a longer season, which is why home gardeners often favor them. The pods are ready to pick roughly 50 to 60 days after planting, when they’re firm and the seeds inside are still small. After harvest, commercial beans are washed, trimmed, and either sold fresh, quickly blanched and frozen to lock in nutrients, or heat-processed for canning in water or brine.
Good to know
- The name string bean comes from a fibrous string that ran along the seam of older varieties; modern breeding has largely eliminated it, which is why most beans you buy today are stringless.
- Green beans are botanically a fruit because they develop from the flower and contain seeds, but they’re universally treated as a vegetable in the kitchen.
- The United States is one of the world’s leading producers of green beans, with Wisconsin, Oregon, and New York among the top producing states.
- Blanching green beans in heavily salted water and immediately shocking them in ice water is the professional kitchen trick for keeping them brilliantly green for hours after cooking.
- Green bean casserole is one of the most widely made dishes in American homes every Thanksgiving, making it one of the most iconic dishes in U.S. holiday cooking.
