There are two recipes for this dish provided below. First, one cook's idea of an improved recipe. Second, the traditional recipe.
All of the traditional recipes I have seen for green bean casserole use cream of mushroom soup as one of the ingredients. This recipe did not, originally - but it does now. It also uses sour cream, and grated swiss cheese, which are not typical ingredients for a green bean casserole.
When I watched this dish being made on a TV show I was intrigued as it sounded like it would be delicious and different. Thus, I put the recipe into Food Nirvana and we tried it for Thanksgiving dinner.
We were not impressed at all with the dish using the given recipe and it has been modified below considerably. There was too little sauce, it was bland and without character in flavor, and the beans should have been French cut first, and the good flavor from the traditional cream of mushroom soup was missing. Moreover, additional herbs and pungent cheese were needed to give the dish "zing."
If you want a totally traditional recipe for green bean casserole you can look at the second recipe shown below, but what I provide first is my present recommendation to capture the better parts of the initial imaginative TV recipe and then supplement it as needed. It needed a lot of help! But all that means is no source of recipe information is to be trusted implicitly. We try recipes and then modify them to suit our tastes, or discard them.
Ingredients:
3 cups of French’s® Fried Onions (or make your own)
2 tablespoons of flour
4 tablespoons of butter
1½ cups of sour cream
1, 8 ounce can (drained net weight) of sliced mushrooms, drained
1 cup of light cream
2 teaspoons of Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon of grated nutmeg
1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese
1 1/2 teaspoons of salt
3/4 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper
1, 10 ounce can of Campbell's® Cream of Mushroom condensed soup
½ pound of swiss cheese, grated
3, 16 ounce cans of french cut green beans, drained (or use the equivalent amount of blanched frozen french cut green beans, thawed and drained)
Directions:
Set the oven at 375ºF.
Coat the inside of a 9"x13"x2" glass baking dish lightly with butter.
Melt the 4 tablespoons of butter on low heat in a small saucepan and then add the flour and mix well as if you were making a roux.
Once the "roux" is thickening then add the sour cream and mix well, then add the cream of mushroom soup and the light cream and again mix well.
Add the salt and pepper to the mixture and stir it in, then add the Dijon mustard, the nutmeg and the swiss cheese and mix well.
Remove the saucepan from the heat and set the sauce aside.
Toss/mix the green beans and the canned mushrooms and the Parmesan cheese and two thirds of the fried onions in a large bowl to make a uniform mixture, then put the mixture into the casserole.
Pour the sauce over the casserole ingredients evenly. Make sure the sauce coats all the casserole contents and is evident on the underside of the casserole.
Bake the casserole for 20 minutes. Check it to make sure it is bubbling slowly due to boiling. If not, bake an additional 5 or 10 minutes.
Sprinkle the rest of the fried onions on top evenly and bake for an additional 5 minutes.
Remove the casserole from the oven and put it into a 160ºF warming oven until it is time to serve the meal.
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Traditional Green Bean Casserole Recipe:
Ingredients:
1 can (10 1/2 ounce) of Campbell’s® Condensed Cream of Mushroom
1/2 cup of milk
1 teaspoon of soy sauce
1 dash of black pepper
4 cups of cooked cut green beans
1 1/3 cups of French’s® French Fried Onions
Directions:
Heat the oven to 350 degrees.
Stir the soup, milk, soy sauce, black pepper, beans and 2/3 cup onions together in a 1 1/2 quart casserole.
Bake for 25 minutes or until the bean mixture is hot and bubbling.
Stir the bean mixture. Sprinkle the top with the remaining onions.
Bake for 5 additional minutes or until the onions are golden brown.
Serve hot.