This Sautéed Green Beans with Bleu Cheese and Walnuts recipe is a wonderful way to eat more healthy green vegetables. It’s fancy enough to be served at a dinner party and quick/easy enough to make on a casual weeknight (it takes only 10 minutes total!). It’s healthy, gluten-free, and low-carb. The bleu cheese crumbles melt slightly over the green beans and create a sharp, tangy coat over every single bite that’s out of this world.
You can make these for Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or Easter, or on any random day you choose. Green beans are a wonderful year-round side, but are particularly in-season in the springtime. I have some almost ready for harvest in my backyard vegetable garden right now! And I’m almost certainly going to be making this recipe again with them.
Green beans are one of my favorite vegetables. I love that they are delicious raw, crisp-tender (like in this recipe), or cooked for hours until soft and mushy (like Southern-Style green beans). They have a unique flavor that stands up on their own but they also tend to absorb all the flavors around them. They are super healthy and packed with vitamins, fiber, and nutrients. While technically a legume, green beans, along with snow peas and snap peas, are unique because you eat the pod as well as the beans inside the pod. This makes them more akin to a green vegetable in terms of nutrients (which is why they are Paleo and Whole30 compliant) since they are more pod than bean.
Cooking these involves nothing more than a gentle sauté in a large skillet (I used my 12-inch Calphalon Tri-Ply Stainless Steel Skillet) in olive oil with plenty of salt and pepper. Then, the green beans are moved to a plate and sprinkled with walnuts and bleu cheese. If you want to get fancy, you can toast the walnuts in the skillet before hand. If you’re not a fan of bleu cheese, I recommend using crumbled feta, goat cheese, or queso fresco as a more mild-flavored substitute.
We had these for dinner as a side to last week’s recipe post: Crispy Honey Buffalo Chicken Thighs (because bleu cheese and buffalo chicken are a match made in heaven!).
Try out these Grilled Green Beans with Gochujang Mayo, too!
Recipe for Sauteed Green Beans with Bleu Cheese and Walnuts below!
Sautéed Green Beans with Blue Cheese and Walnuts
Equipment
- Large Skillet
Ingredients
- 1 lb. fresh green beans washed and trimmed
- 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
- kosher salt to taste
- black pepper to taste
- 1/2 cup walnuts roughly chopped
- 4 oz. blue cheese crumbled
Instructions
- Heat the olive oil (1 tablespoon) in a large skillet over medium-high heat.
- Add the green beans (1 lb.) and salt and pepper to taste, and sauté for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until crisp-tender and beginning to brown on the outside.
- Remove from heat and transfer to a serving platter.
- Sprinkle the walnuts (1/2 cup) and crumbled blue cheese (4 oz.) on top.
- Serve immediately.
Notes
- If you're not a fan of blue cheese, I recommend using crumbled feta, goat cheese, or queso fresco as a more mild-flavored substitute.
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The provided nutrition information does not include any added sodium from seasoning to taste, any optional ingredients, and it does not take brands into account. Feel free to calculate it yourself using this calculator or by adding the recipe to Yummly.
Nutrition
Nutrition Information Disclaimer
The provided nutrition information is my best estimate and reflects one serving of the recipe (total servings indicated at top of recipe card). It does not include any added sodium from seasoning to taste, any optional ingredients, and it does not take brands into account. I use an automatic API to calculate this information. Feel free to calculate it yourself using one of these tools:
Lola
I made it ~ oh yum 😋
Will definitely make it again and share.
Elizabeth Lindemann
So glad you liked it!