VIDEO – French Beans with Tomato and Garlic

Video Transcript

Hi I’m Terry Lavin from St Helen’s College on behalf of VegetableExpert.co.uk I’m going to show you how to make ‘French beans in a tomato and garlic sauce.’

You will need some fresh French beans, onion, garlic, tomato puree, butter, tin tomatoes, some salt and pepper.

Make sure that the French beans have been topped and tailed first and foremost. When peeling garlic take a piece of garlic onto the board take your knife, lie plat and give it a smack, that will automatically peel your garlic for you. Remove the root and take your knife, and just run the knife over the garlic, like that. You don’t want it in too big apiece, that’s fine.

We peel the onion, so top and tail the onion, removing the root, make sure the skin is off, all that skin away. To slice the onion, cut the onion in half and remove the root. When you have removed the root, slice down keeping your fingers tucked in, little tip here turn the onion, that way you don’t have long pieces of onion in your dish.

Stainless steel is fantastic for cooking green veg; you get a far better colour. Make sure that the water is boiling rapidly, plunge your French beans into it, and let them cook for three to four minutes. What you really want with the French beans is that they are nice and crisp, not over cooked, and not slimy.

When the French beans are ready to test one, take it out of the boiling water, plunge it into cold water, and if it snaps easy it is cooked. All we are going to do with the French beans now is to drain them in a colander, and we are going to plunge them into cold water. This stops the cooking process and insures that what you have got is lovely fresh crisp French beans just like that.

Put a pan on the stove, again just a little bit of butter, and all we are going to do is cook the onions and the garlic without burning it. This is a process called sweating, which means that we are going to actually cook the onion and the garlic until it is translucent we don’t want any colour at all.

Into there I add my chopped tomatoes and just a little bit of tomato puree. The tomato puree gives the sauce a little bit of body. Mix it in and just allow it too cook for a further two, three minutes.

The final stage to this, add the French beans mix them in, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

There’s my ‘French beans with garlic and tomato sauce.’

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