Southern Green Beans are cooked low and slow with tons of flavor from the pork. These would be perfect right in between the honey baked ham and mashed potatoes. 

This is probably as close as we’re getting for green food this week. You know, St. Patrick’s day is tomorrow and there isn’t a green treat to be found in my kitchen.  I blame it on the fact that I’m trying my best to not eat junk food too much right now but in reality it’s really because I ran out of time.  I had great hopes of converting these Chocolate Peanut Butter Crunch Brownies into St. Patrick’s day treats but that didn’t happen.

I was going to tint the marshmallow creme green and pipe little shamrocks on top of the brownies and post them tomorrow but that’s not happening. Sorry y’all. Just use your imaginations.  You’re got an imagination right? haha **Oh my word, totally off subject but kinda on subject, Once I was keeping my niece when she was younger and I was trying to get get her away from my tablet and into her room (yes she had a room at our house haha) to play with her toys. I told her to use her  imagination and she responded with “What’s imagination, I don’t have that, I need the game to play.” — I’m pretty sure my imagination loving heart died a little haha** But anyways LOL, back onto this green recipe. 😉

That’s ok thought because I’m going to pretend like I’m just way ahead for Easter and that I’m posting this for you as something you can serve with your Easter lunch or dinner. These would be perfect right in between the honey baked ham and mashed potatoes.

Slow Cooked Southern Style Green Beans are pretty much would I would consider a staple in the south. We grew up with them being served with a Monday night dinner and you’d also find them sitting right beside the Easter ham after church on Sunday.

As soon as someone mentions green beans I immediately picture the huge pot of fresh string beans simmering away on the stove.  When my grandparents or dad would make green beans they’d start them early in the morning, season them just right and then literally simmer them all dang day.

Sometimes I would swear that they forgot about them and were just using that pot on the stove as a decorations haha but every so often they’d come in, give them a taste, stir them up and leave them to cook.

Even though I have most of my farming and garden memories from my nana and papa (mom’s parents) I have my memories of snapping green beans with my Ma (dad’s mom).

I’m assuming she bought them from the grocery store because I don’t remember her having a very big garden, but I remember sitting on her tan couch across from the kitchen and kitchen table with my bag of green beans and big kitchen bowl. I’d sit there snapping the ends off of the green bean and tossing the beans into my bowl while I listened to Ma tell me about how her mother and grandmother completed this same task. It’s a small memory but I love it.

Let’s move onto making these sting beans.  But first…am I the only one that calls them string beans and green beans? haha I call them green beans before I cook them and string beans after I good them. haha.

Anyways, so while my grandparents and dad made these on the stove, I’m using my slow cooker for these! Either way is fine, but if it’s going to cook all day and I’ve got other needs for the stove I just pop them into the slow cooker on the counter. 🙂 Plus, if these are going to cook while I’m at work they’re always going into the slow cooker because I’m not leaving my oven on when I’m not home! *I don’t know if she does it anymore but my sister in law use to do that to cook food while they were at church and it drove me insane! haha*

So, clean those green beans and snap the ends off. If the beans are super long snap them in half and toss them into the bowl of the slow cooker. **Throw the ends away! haha Don’t throw those into the slow cooker.**

Turn the slow cooker onto low.

Dice up half of the pork jowl, add that  and all of the pork neck to the green beans. Yes, Yes, I know that it might sound weird and pork neck is like…..well you know…a neck but the flavor is going to be worth it. Just trust me on this.

Next, pour in the chicken broth. You could also use vegetable broth if that’s what you have on hand.

Then pour in the water.  You want there to be enough water to barely cover the green beans.

Add in the garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper. You may want to add more seasonings later but just do a little taste test half way through.

Stir Well and mix everything up.

Cook for 6 hours on low.

At the 6 hour mark, add the other 1/2 of the diced pork jowl to skillet and cook for about 10 minutes. Pour the pork jowl and drippings into the green beans.

Now you don’t have to do this step if you don’t want to. You could just add all of the diced pork jowl at the beginning but I love the flavor that it gives to the beans once you fry it up a bit before adding it. I 100% recommend that you do it this way haha. It’s like cooking and adding super, SUPER THICK BACON to the green beans with all of those bacon drippings.

After you’ve done that cook on low for another 2 hours or until the green beans are super super tender. Taste test and season if needed.

My dad use to also add small round new potatoes to his string beans when he cooked them. They get super, super tender and soak up all of those flavors.

Also, I know this makes a lot of string beans but here’s what you do if you don’t want to or can’t eat them all.  Eat what you want and then let the rest cool complete (or stick them in the fridge to chill down).

 

Grab a few gallon sized bags and fill the half way with the string beans. Press the air out of the bag and seal it.

Lay it on a flat surface and spread the string beans out flat (inside of the bag), lay them on a baking sheet (one that will fit into your freezer) and stack the other bags of string beans flat on top.

Stick the sheet pan with the string beans into the freezer to freeze. Once they’re frozen remove the baking sheet and stack the green beans however you’d like to in the freezer.

If you freeze them thin like this they will take up less space and when you go to re-heat them it won’t take long at all.

When you’re ready to re-heat, split a bag open and plop the string beans into a large pot. Add a splash of chicken broth or water and heat until hot.

 

So…what do you call them? Are they Snap beans? Green Beans? Or String Beans?

 

Slow Cooked Southern Style Green Beans – Southern String Beans