Everything that could go wrong in trying to make this Balsamic Green Bean Salad recipe — went wrong. It wasn’t the recipe’s fault — truly.
Let me start in the beginning (okay, okay, not that far back — laughing).
I had prepared everything to start making the recipe assuming that life was not going to give me any twists and turns. I took my picture of the ingredients for ya’ll and it came out quite good, no? So few ingredients = my kind of recipe. (Salt and pepper not shown)
Things were going along well. I was going to serve this with some Fine Chicken and a baked yam so I was juggling the different recipes — nothing unusual so far.
So, now I’m ready to start the pot of water that the beans will blanch in. I added the cold water from the sink into the pot and put it on the stovetop to boil. Well, it boiled quite nicely to a very brown rusty color with sediment on the bottom. So, I put my ingredients aside and continued working on the rest of the meal. I came back to this recipe a week later as we had “water” issues.
I put the green beans in the freezer as I didn’t think they would hold up for a week until we figured out the water problem. When I finally made the recipe I was using the frozen green beans and it didn’t work too well. It tasted okay but it should have come out great.
I had allowed the green beans to thaw, blanched them in the boiling water, drained them then added them to ice water (yes, ice water to stop the cooking process).
So — the problem arose when I drained the beans from the ice water. (Yes, I know, I know, that is a LOT of ice — laughing.)
The green beans came out limp-y. Â Boohoo! Â That’s how I felt. I went ahead and put the rest of the salad together and, like I said, it came out good but it should have been great. So — let’s look at this recipe, shall we?
Ingredients
- 1 pound green beans, trimmed and cut in half
- 1/2Â red onion, finely chopped
- 3Â tablespoons olive oil
- 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar (original recipe calls for 2 tablespoons)
- 1/3Â cup chopped walnuts
- Salt and pepper to taste
Directions
- Bring a medium sized pot of salted water to a boil.
- Add the green beans and blanch for 2-3 minutes.
- Prepare a large bowl of ice water while the beans are cooking.
- Drain the beans in a colander then promptly add them into a bowl of ice water for a minute or so.
- Drain the beans again.
- Add the green beans and the red onion in a bowl.
- Toss the olive oil in and toss to coat everything together.
- Add the balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper to the bowl with the green beans then toss to coat everything again.
- Toss the bean mixture with the chopped walnuts.
And here is the final product (in spite of them coming out a bit limp-y.)
I served mine with baked drumsticks and a baked yam. Â Delicious!
Special thanks to Paleo Grubs — check out their website!
(By the way, I found out that water wells should be purged once a year or so to avoid the problem of sediment build-up. The alternative is to attach a hose to your pressure tank, open a window and drain the pressure tank for 4 hours. Uh, not likely to happen since the temperatures have been quite cold and opening a window for 4 hours and running the water outside (we’d have a skating rink) is just not feasible. Â For now, we keep draining the faucets and that seems to have worked.)
Life …
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