Olive-Oil-Braised Greek Green Beans with Tomato and Dill

By Sprig Originals ✓ · cooked up in Sprig

A taverna-style side where green beans are deliberately cooked far past crisp-tender until they turn silky and sweet, sunk in a glossy tomato and olive oil braise with soft potato wedges. It takes almost no skill and tastes even better the next day, straight from the fridge or barely warmed.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lb green beans, trimmed and snapped in half
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for finishing
• 1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced
• 5 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 12 oz Yukon Gold potatoes (about 2 medium), cut into 1-inch wedges
• 1 can (14.5 oz) whole peeled tomatoes, crushed by hand, with juices
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 1/4 tsp kosher salt, plus more to taste
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 cup water

• 1/3 cup chopped fresh dill
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 1 tbsp red wine vinegar or lemon juice
• 4 oz feta, crumbled (optional)
• Crusty bread, for serving

Instructions

1. Trim the stem ends from the green beans and snap or cut them in half crosswise. Don't worry about uniformity — they will collapse into softness anyway. Cut the potatoes into 1-inch wedges and keep them in a bowl of cold water until needed.
2. Warm the 1/2 cup olive oil in a wide 5- to 6-quart Dutch oven or deep sauté pan over medium heat. Add the sliced onion and a pinch of salt and cook, stirring often, for 8 to 10 minutes, until very soft and translucent but not browned. This is a sweet, gentle base, not a caramelized one.
3. Add the sliced garlic and cook 1 minute more, until fragrant. Stir in the tomato paste and cook, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes so it darkens slightly and loses its raw edge.
4. Add the hand-crushed tomatoes with their juices, the sugar, 1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt, the black pepper, and 1 cup water. Bring to a simmer and cook 3 minutes.
5. Drain the potatoes and add them along with the green beans and half the dill. Stir well to coat everything in the oily tomato sauce. The liquid should come about two-thirds of the way up the vegetables; add a splash more water if needed.
6. Bring to a lively simmer, then reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook for 35 to 45 minutes, stirring gently every 10 minutes or so. The beans are done when they are fully limp and silky — a bean should collapse when pressed against the side of the pot, with no snap at all. This is the whole point of the dish; crisp-tender is a failure here.
7. Uncover, raise the heat to medium, and simmer 5 to 10 minutes more to reduce the liquid until the oil separates out and pools glossy and orange around the vegetables. Shake the pan rather than stirring hard so the potatoes stay intact.
8. Turn off the heat and stir in the remaining dill, the parsley, and the red wine vinegar or lemon juice. Taste and add salt until the tomato tastes bright rather than flat. Let it sit off the heat for at least 15 minutes — 30 is better — so the beans reabsorb the seasoned oil.
9. Serve warm or at room temperature, drizzled with a little more raw olive oil, topped with crumbled feta if you like, with plenty of bread for the pan juices.

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Nutrition (per serving, estimated)

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