Southern Green Beans and New Potatoes

I cooked fresh green beans and new potatoes in my crock pot today so decided to share the recipe and my life long love of this classic southern summer dish. I'm really a vegetarian at heart, I like and eat meat but absolutely LOVE vegetables of all shapes and sizes. I grew up in a house full of women with my grandma cooking home cooked meals but not a whole lot of meat.  She was a wonderful cook but always said she was "just cooking groceries". Every late spring and early summer when fresh green beans were in season she would cook up a big pot of them with new potatoes seasoned with bacon grease and served with cornbread.  That would be our whole dinner and I was in heaven.  When I was newly married I got a set of 11 Southern Heritage cookbooks, one of them just vegetables. These are some of my favorite, especially the vegetable one, and I have used them for years. So here I was a new bride making a homemade dinner for my husband and I cooked southern green beans and new potatoes (using my new cookbook and calling Grandma) with cornbread and set it on the table and the first thing John said was "where's the meat?", I'm like we never ate it with meat, this was the whole meal.  I learned then that I had married a carnivore and from then on all or most of my vegetarian meals have some kind of meat in them. On the plus side, after 34 years of marriage I have turned him more to the "green" side and have learned that if the veggies are shredded to where he can't distinguish what's in there then he'll eat it.

The last couple of years I've been buying fresh veggies all summer at the farmer's market, cutting them up, putting them in freezer bags and freezing them then enjoying them all year long. I don't buy canned vegetables anymore (except for black and kidney beans) I just use mine out of the freezer.  It's great pulling out green beans in winter and throwing them into whatever I'm cooking.  But come summer, I can't resist buying them even if I have bags in the freezer which is what happened last Saturday. I bought a large gallon bag full of them and found that I didn't have room in my freezer for them when I got home. I plan on doing some canning and pickling this summer plus cleaning out and organizing my freezer.  I still have vegetables to buy, to feed my farmer's market addiction. With that said, here's the recipe.

Southern Fresh Green Beans and New Potatoes

 

2 lbs fresh green beans, snapped and rinsed (1 used a gallon bag full, not sure how many pounds)

1 to 2 med onions, chopped

1 to 2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 c sweet peppers, chopped

6 cups water

1/2 t each, seasoned salt, pepper

1 T parsley
2 T sofrito

2 bay leaves

2 T bacon grease

12 new potatoes, washed and chopped

1/4 to 1/2 t red chili flakes, optional for a little kick

Cook on stove, covered and simmer for 2 hours.  Green beans take longer to cook than potatoes so add potatoes after 1 1/2 hours for the last 30 minutes or until tender. Or cook everything in crock pot on high for 4 to 6 hours (mine took 6 hours) or on low for 8 hours or until tender. Can add cooked bacon or ham after veggies are cooked, serve with cornbread. I added a ham steak cut up to the cooked beans for my carnivore

Enjoy, Bamah.

cooked on stove top