Are you a bibulous and decidedly non-kosher/halal type? Have I got a recipe for you! Oddly enough, although this recipe screams “Happy Thanksgiving!” or “Merry Christmas!” I just make this randomly when the weather is cold and the mood strikes. Am I Canceling Christmas or am I Bringing a Little Christmas When It’s Most Needed? I don’t know.
4 strips bacon diced and cooked until crispy
1 medium sweet yellow onion, diced
1 clove garlic minced
1 pound green beans cleaned and ends trimmed
½ teaspoon black pepper freshly ground
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes or to taste
¼ cup water
3 tablespoons bourbon
3 tablespoons dark brown sugar
Cut bacon into ½” pieces, then place in 12-inch skillet and cook until crisp, but not burned. Remove from bacon grease (save grease) and set aside bacon to use as garnish.
Add onion to bacon grease and sauté until onion is translucent. Add minced garlic, and cook just until garlic blooms (softens and releases it’s oil) approximately 15-30 seconds.
Add green beans, pepper, salt and red pepper flakes then cook until the beans begin to show brown spots, 6-8 minutes over medium heat.
Add water, cover and cook 2 minutes. Beans should still be bright green and crisp.
Add bourbon and brown sugar and cook 4-5 minutes, uncovered, until beans are barely crisp. Stir often.
Taste the beans and add salt, if needed.
Sprinkle beans with crisped bacon and serve.
What a great recipe. It ALMOST makes up for the unsettling header graphic.
I actually searched for an image of the Jolly Green Giant wearing a Santa suit, or at least a hat, but I found nothing. I have a feeling JGG has not accepted Jesus Christ (and by extension, Santa Claus) as his own Personal Savior.
Bourbon and bacon sounds like my best meal ever. Can I get it without the green beans?
That was my thought! Nuns made me eat green beans until I puked when I was in preschool & I could never handle them again! Nope, not going to let those bitches win!!!
You can, notionally. There used to be a New Orleans-themed restaurant called something like Bourbon Street or French Quarter or something in Midtown, it’s long gone, but they used to serve bacon mashed potatoes. They had a little warning note on the menu that the mashed potatoes were made with bourbon somehow. It wouldn’t get you drunk, alcohol burns off in the cooking process, it’s only there for the flavoring, but I guess it was there for people in recovery and/or people just opposed to liquor in general. Why you would go to a New Orleans-themed restaurant if you were one of those people is anyone’s guess, but they did have excellent live music continually, jazz and zydeco and blues, all kinds of stuff, so maybe that was the draw. I used to go for the shrimp gumbo and their $3 happy hour oversized Hurricanes. Have you ever had one of those? Jesus. Theirs must have been 90% (grain) alcohol.
Happy ho-ho-holidays, everyone! Here in the Greatest City on Earth™ it’s a little overcast and rainy and according to the wildly erratic Weather Channel website it’s notionally 43° outside but who knows. In any event we’re holding up.
Not so in our National Federal Capital City, our very own Brasilia, where panic has set in and where my poor Better Half is, visiting some maternal relatives and a friend he has down there. People canceled left and right and he’s coming home unexpectedly. He reports that Reagan National is like the lifeboat deck on the Titanic. I was once caught in what I thought was a few flurries in DC and I was driving somewhere in that stretch between Capitol Hill and Georgetown but north of Pennsylvania Avenue and all hell broke loose. I said, “Don’t half the people who cycle in and out of Washington come from the north and the midwest? They don’t know how to deal with this?” One of the people crammed into the back seat, a DC long-timer, said, “The problem is the other half come from the south and California so they’re not used to this. With W in the White House we have a lot of Texans and they’re not so good with snow. The natives just stay home because they all work for the government and they’re ‘non-essential workers’ so it’s days off for them.”
“If they’re so ‘non-essential’ why–Jesus Christ, you have a green light, drive, you fucking idiot!”
BREAKING: Poor Better Half. He’s back now. The plan was we’d spend Christmas together anyway but beforehand he wanted to see this maternal aunt because she’s not doing too well and to see this friend of his down in DC. Having spent all this money on airfare, a glitzy downtown DC hotel, and gift cards for his aunt and her grifting and clinically insane children and grandchildren (one of whom did three years in prison) this all came to naught. Because of the rain and the threat of snow. Their loss is my gain, though, because he gave me half the gift cards and kept half, and is going to give the grand prize, the one for his aunt, to her by mail and hope that it gets to her. She’s well enough to be able to tune into the Home Shopping Network or whatever it’s called and order stuff from them. That is her hobby, funded by the Federal pension she started collecting 30+ years ago. She’s 79.
It wasn’t a total loss, exactly. He got to see that friend of his, who, like him, is from Boston and blows off doom-and-gloom weather forecasts. Unfortunately they went to some high-end Italian place (Better Half was paying) and the friend developed food poisoning or an allergic reaction about half an hour into the meal. Better Half reports that my emergency room experience was like staying in a luxury resort compared to what his friend endured in a DC emergency room so that’s useful info, I guess, try not to experience a medical emergency in DC if you can help it.