A watercolour of soft green beans stewed in a red tomato sauce with olive oil pooling at the edge of the dish
Generated with OpenAI gpt-image-1
Adapted from Fasolakia

Braised green beans in tomato

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Olive oil.

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves
3
Burners
1
Pans
1
Water
0.1 L
Active
8 min
Total
22 min

Ingredients

A Greek dish that uses considerably more olive oil than feels reasonable, and is worse for every spoonful you hold back. The oil is not a cooking medium here; it is an ingredient.

  1. Oil in the pan, all of it. Dried onion for three minutes, then garlic and herbs for twenty seconds.
  2. Tomatoes in. Cook down hard for 10 minutes until the colour goes brick and the oil starts separating out at the edges. That separation is the sign it is ready; before it happens the sauce still tastes raw.
  3. Drained green beans in for 5 minutes, just to heat and take on the sauce.
  4. Salt, lemon juice off the heat.

Genuinely better at room temperature an hour later, which is the traditional way to eat it and makes it an unusually good thing to cook early.

Serves 3 as a side, 2 with bread as a meal.

What this was adapted from

Fasolakia: the Greek dish of green beans stewed slowly in tomato and olive oil

  • fresh green beans stewed 40 minutes → tinned green beans, warmed through at the end

    The original cooks the beans until they surrender, which tinned beans already have. Adding them at the end instead means building the sauce first and warming them in it -- ten minutes rather than forty, and the beans keep what shape they have left.