Recipe Make-Over: Better Than Schwan's Green Bean Fries

My daughter is the one who challenges me the most with cooking.  My son is much more flexible with what he will eat, and he likes many more healthy foods than my daughter.  She would happily live on sugar and fried foods if left to her own devices.  Yecchh!  One of the things she loves is the green bean fries from the Schwan's guy.  Schwan's is a frozen food company- they come by with their giant refrigerated truck once every other week, and I get suckered into buying breakfast sausage, waffles, ice cream or popsicles, or the infamous green bean fries. On the surface, they don't sound so bad: breaded green beans.  How bad could that be?  Well, let me tell you: partially hydrogenated palm, cottonseed, and soybean oil, monosodium glutamate (MSG), and a whopping 200 calories, 11 grams of fat, and 490 mg of sodium per serving- which is only 10 pieces.  Yikes!!  There has to be a better way...right??

It can't be that hard.  It's green beans, breaded, and cooked until crispy.  Frying is not the healthiest cooking method in the world, so if we're trying to make over this recipe, we'll have to try something else.  Years ago, Oprah's chef, Rosie, had a very successful cookbook, and one of the best recipes in it was "Unfried Chicken"- breaded chicken, cooked on an oiled baking sheet at a high temperature until crispy.  That could work.  Chicken is already pretty moist and tender though.  Green beans- not so much.  What to do?

Research on green bean fries yielded many similar results.  Blanch the green beans until just tender, then bread and then cook.  Since we are avoiding frying in oil, that leaves oven baking as the preferred cooking method.  Blanching is easy, but the green beans need to dry completely in order to hold any breading.  The same technique used to bread chicken (such as in the chicken schnitzel) would probably work here, and my experiments confirmed this.  Coating in flour, then egg, and then bread crumbs produced a nice, substantial breading.

The first step is to wash and trim the green beans- cut both ends off.  Blanch in hot water for 4-5 minutes until just barely tender, then remove from the water and shock with cold water, to stop the cooking process.  Drain, then dry beans.  I laid mine out on a few layers of paper towels and blotted dry with additional paper towels.  I added flavor to the beans by seasoning both the flour and bread crumbs.  I use panko bread crumbs to bread the green beans for the crispiest green bean "fries".  The results are definitely crispy and fresh.  The breading is not as dense as Schwan's, but I like that about them.  At least I know I am not going to have a MSG headache an hour after dinner!  Meredith is not necessarily convinced that these are better...someday she will believe me!
Oven Baked Green Bean Fries

@ 1 pound of fresh green beans, washed and trimmed
1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
2 eggs
1.5 cups  panko bread crumbs
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp garlic powder
salt/pepper to taste
3 tbsp olive oil for pan

1.  Blanch green beans.  Heat water in a medium pan until boiling, then add green beans.  Cook about 4 minutes until just barely tender.  Drain and bathe green beans in cold water to stop cooking.  Drain and set aside, allowing to dry.

2.  In a shallow dish, combine flour and seasonings.

3.  In a separate dish, beat eggs.

4.  In a third dish, combine panko crumbs and seasoning.

5.  When green beans are dry, toss in flour mixture.  Remove a few at a time and dip in egg mixture, then into panko crumbs, coating completely.

6.  Rub oil over the surface of a baking sheet.  Add breaded green beans, separating so that they do not touch one antother.

7.  Heat oven to 425 degrees.  Bake green beans about 5 minutes, then toss with a spatula and continue baking 5-7 minutes more until crispy and browned.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Serve while hot.