Steakhouse Green Beans With Bacon: So Good You’ll Be Back for Thirds, Maybe Even Fourths

Talk about a recipe that'll set every one of your taste buds off on a happy dance. Sweet, salty, savory deliciousness at it's best. 

I’m blessed to have friends who grow their own produce and share their bounty with me. One of my friends brought me several pounds of green beans this past weekend and while I blanched and froze most of them to enjoy over the winter, I decided to treat myself and indulge in my favorite green bean dish: steakhouse green beans.

What I love about this recipe (beside the fact there's BACON in it!!) is that it's so simple to make that even someone who's not the greatest cook can't really mess it up.  It also calls for very few ingredients and isn't one of those recipes that you have to labor over.  You can walk away from the kitchen for a couple minutes to answer the door or stop your kid from beating his brother and it's not going to burn.

You’ll need:
6 strips of bacon, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 envelope of au jus mix
3 cups of water
1 tablespoon of garlic powder
¾ a teaspoon of black pepper
A pinch of white pepper
1 pound of fresh green beans

Directions:
In a large frying pan, fry the bacon until it’s crisp and scoop out, placing on a paper towel. You’ll want to leave the drippings in the pan.

Cut the ends of the green beans and wash well.

To the pan with the bacon drippings, add the au jus mix, water, garlic powder, white pepper and black pepper and bring it to a boil. Add the green beans and cook on medium high heat until they’re tender, stirring every once in a while. It usually takes 20 or so minutes for them to get nice and tender for me. As the beans cook, the liquid will start to burn off. This is okay. Also okay is if after the beans are as tender as you want them to be, you still have some leftover liquid.

Empty contents of pan into a serving dish and using the bacon you cooked, crumble and place on top of the beans.

This time when I made my steakhouse green bean recipe, I had a whole bunch of leftover sauce so after I placed some in the serving bowl with the beans, I decided instead of throwing out the extra sauce (I hate waste!), I'd marinate some portobello mushrooms in the cooled down juice for a couple of minutes and then cooked them over a low flame on the grill just for a couple of minutes, turning frequently until nice and tender, just the way I like them!