BWW Cooks: Plan to Switch Up Next Thanksgiving

Now that the holiday is over, it's time for us to have a serious talk. I didn't want to bother you about this last week, and I certainly didn't want to force you to revisit your Thanksgiving traditions in the month before Turkey Day. But let's think ahead for next year, huh? We really need to talk about your side dishes. No, I'm not complaining about your mother's mashed potato recipe, it's lovely. I do think, however, that baked sweet potatoes or mashed sweet potatoes, or my sweet potato-apple casserole, are better than that stuff with the marshmallows on top.

But let's get real, there's a bigger problem than the marshmallows. Or than the jellied, canned cranberry sauce, when you can make fresh cranberry-orange relish the day before with three ingredients and a food processor (and, if you're me, a dash of Triple Sec as well as the sugar). Yeah, you got real trouble on that table, and it's called green bean casserole.

All right, Uncle Larry loves it. Sure, the kids will actually eat two bites of it. And it's been on the table all of your life, because your grandmother first made it back in the Fifties. It's surprisingly not in Jane and Michael Stern's SQUARE MEALS. But it would have fit right in the section on things made out of canned food. Canned sliced green beans. Canned fried onion straws (mostly flour, oil, and salt with onion flavor). Canned cream of mushroom soup, the glue that binds the American foods of the 1950s and 1960's together, America's replacement for the ever-useful béchamel sauce. The recipe was invented in 1955 by Dorcas Reilly of Campbell's as a recipe that used things that likely were on the kitchen shelf; her original copy of the recipe is now in the Inventors' Hall of Fame, as it's that significant.

You know that dish is old and a bit tired, but you know you need a green vegetable on the table, and the casserole really has become a tradition. But what's to be done? And really, people seem to think it tastes pretty good, don't they?

It tastes great, superficially, because it packs a sodium punch that can set your blood pressure back for days, and because of the "natural flavors" (MSG-like natural flavor enhancers). If you must make a traditionAl Green bean casserole the traditional way, try this next year: use no-salt-added green beans and reduced-sodium cream of mushroom soup. Taste it, and if it needs more salt, use sea salt rather than table salt; the flavor is more intense, so you will use less of it. You may find that you really don't need to add salt at all. Try adding a dash of garlic powder, or some ground thyme, a little more pepper, or any combination thereof rather than more salt. Your family's physicians will thank you.

Better yet, green bean casserole can be made with fresh string beans. Start by trimming and cutting some fresh beans, about the same quantity you'd have in the can, about two cups. Cook them on the stove or microwave them before you mix your casserole. Even if you overcook them slightly, they will be, and taste, fresher than the canned beans. You won't need as much salt, because you've just upped the flavor.

Another option: rather than salt, stir in two tablespoons of parmesan cheese. The cheese adds both salt and umami, brightening the dish. If you can be convinced to make a béchamel sauce rather than using the cream of mushroom soup, add fresh parmesan, perhaps even more than two tablespoons, to the sauce before combining everything. Of course, if you use a béchamel, you'll need to add the mushrooms. You could go for a trace of 1950s feel by using canned mushrooms, but sauté some fresh mushrooms instead and you'll be surprised. Use sliced portabellas, or shitake, or perhaps oyster mushrooms, or a mix. Many supermarkets sell pre-packaged sliced mixed mushrooms, which are perfect for this. If you'd rather stick with cream of mushroom soup, try adding extra sautéed fresh mushrooms anyway. You will not be disappointed by the mushroom boost. Again, mushrooms mean umami. Mushrooms and parmesan equal a major flavor intensification that will surprise you.

You could go all the way: fresh green beans, fresh mushrooms, and béchamel. But there's the alleged reason the original recipe was invented, to save the effort of doing all that cooking (although really, it was invented to push canned food sales). Come to think of it, if you made this fresh version during the Leftover Turkey phase of Thanksgiving, you can add two cups of diced turkey and make a turkey casserole with this. Consider adding some noodles as well, if you do that.

Or get radical, which I've done for potluck dinners. Skip the green beans. I cook a package of frozen broccoli cuts or chopped broccoli, and use broccoli instead of canned beans. The same added flavors from the other ingredients work perfectly. Just be sure your broccoli is very well drained. This also works with fresh asparagus and with quartered or chopped Brussels sprouts. You could do it with cauliflower, but there's no color to it then; stick to green vegetables. But avoid both peas and spinach or other leafy greens - peas are too soft to work properly, as well as too sweet, and spinach is entirely too wet.

If you've either managed to reduce the salt or don't mind it, consider reducing the onion straws a bit and adding a little crumbled bacon. You can do a breadcrumb or cracker crumb topping instead of the onion topping, with bacon fat instead of butter in the topping mixture. You don't have to thank me.

If, on the other hand, you keep kosher or want to appeal to vegans, skip the bacon, of course. But also know that you can use unflavored soy milk or other non-dairy milk to make a béchamel sauce. See http://lovingitvegan.com/vegan-white-sauce-bechamel/, which will change your life. If you need something gluten-free, alternatively, make fresh fried onions instead of canned crisp ones, and use gluten free breadcrumbs for topping; as for the béchamel sauce, if your mushroom soup is suspect, try this: https://www.finedininglovers.com/recipes/side/gluten-free-bechamel-sauce-recipe/. The English "potato flour" is potato starch, readily available in the kosher section of your grocery at Passover, so stock up then. I'm never without a box in my cupboard.

If you want a more colorful recipe, or you find that your casseroles tend towards a uniform gray-green, unlike the spiffy pictures in the cookbook, then add more color: dice some pimento, or cook down and sauté some fresh red bell pepper, and toss that in the mix. It won't take much to add a pleasant color contrast.

But however you switch it up, please, just switch it up. Any of the suggestions here will keep the dish familiar without being the "same old, same old," and most of them will produce a much healthier side dish as well. You've got time to try things out before next Thanksgiving hits.

To post a comment, you must register and login.