Skinny Green Bean Casserole has the most amazing taste you can expect from a green bean casserole. Made with fresh green beans and mushrooms and topped with fried onions and parmesan. No canned mushroom soup or heavy cream. Plus, onions are fried in very little oil.
I don’t even remember how many times we’ve made this casserole since I first tested the recipe. Creamy yet healthy. Whoever eats it LOVES the recipe and wants to make it for their family. Seeing that this casserole is a favorite one among our readers too, we decided to update this post with new photos and with a few changes in the recipe.
I used eggs in the original recipe, but after receiving several suggestions from you, I tried it without eggs and added mushrooms instead. It becomes even tastier this way! Also, I added onion rings as a final topping in this version. We love this updated version better.
Skinny Green Bean Casserole has already become one of our favorite vegetarian dishes in summer. Green beans are my favorite summer vegetable and I mostly cook fresh Green Beans with Corn, which is another great vegetarian dish. I also love to experiment new recipes with it because I want to use fresh green beans as much as I can. You know frozen or canned green beans are not even close to the flavor of fresh one.
I use the same pan to cook everything for this casserole. First, I boil the beans and drain. I dry the pan and cook onions and mushroom in the same pan. Then I transfer the cooked beans into this pan and stir well to combine everything well.
The idea of this green bean casserole was born when we were enjoying our Skinny Zucchini Casserole. Glad it did! This is a super yummy green bean dish and I can’t believe how I didn’t try it before. I haven’t yet met a single person who hates green beans, but if there is someone you know, please share this recipe. It will be their turning point in the kitchen.
Green bean casserole is not something well-known in Turkish cuisine. I didn’t follow a specific recipe when making this amazing casserole. I just used my passion and instinct and developed the recipe myself. When I looked for a good recipe for green bean casserole, I saw that it is mostly made with mushroom soup. It’s maybe something traditional to pair these two, I don’t know. But I wanted to go skinny and made my casserole without canned mushroom soup. I cooked mushrooms and then combined it with milk and cornmeal in the same pot.
This is not a very cheesy casserole, just with a reasonable amount on the top. You can definitely increase or decrease the amount for your taste. Most recipes might call for heavy cream but I used unsweetened fat-free milk to give it a milky flavor. If you like heavy cream and don’t care about skinny recipes, use it instead. Also I wanted to make it gluten-free, so I used cornmeal, but you might prefer all purpose flour if your diet allows.
The important thing when making this green bean casserole is to boil the green beans in the right way. So what does that mean? Toss in green beans in boiling salted water and cook them just for 3 minutes and transfer them immediately into a large bowl full of water and ice cubes to stop its cooking. They will keep their lovely green color this way and your casserole will look even more appealing.
See our other casserole recipe videos here:
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Skinny Green Bean Casserole
Green beans, eggs, milk, cheese and cornmeal make this amazingly scrumptious casserole.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 55 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
- Category: Casserole
- Cuisine: American
Ingredients
- 2 lbs green beans, trimmed and chopped
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 onions, thinly sliced
- 2 cups chopped mushroom
- 2 cups milk
- 2 1/2 tablespoon cornmeal
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Topping:
- 3 onions, sliced in rings
- 1/2 cup cornmeal
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 3 tablespoons shredded parmesan
Instructions
- Boil a pot of salted water and toss in the green beans. Cook for 3 minutes and transfer into a bowl full of water and ice. Let them sit there for about 5 minutes and strain. Pat them dry with paper towel or a clean kitchen towel.
- Preheat the oven to 190C (374F).
- Heat olive oil in a large pan. (You can use the same pot you boiled the green beans. Just dry it beforehand). Saute onions until translucent. Add in mushrooms, black pepper and salt. Cook covered over medium high heat until almost no water left.
- Bring it to the lowest heat. Add in 2 cups milk and 2 and 1/2 tablespoon cornmeal. Stir well. Cook until it gets thick. Remove from heat.
- Fold in green beans and stir until combined well.
- Grease a baking pan and pour the mixture in it.
- Bake for about 40 minutes, take it out and top with 3 tablespoons of cheese and put it back in oven. Cook for another 5 minutes until the cheese topping melts a little and gets golden.
- Meanwhile coat onion rings with cornmeal. Shake the rings to remove the excessive cornmeal. Set aside.
- Heat olive oil in a pan. Cook the cornmeal coated onion rings until brown. Shake the pan or stir occasionally not to burn the onions.
- Top the green bean casserole with the onions and serve warm.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 4
Hi, just wondering if you have the old recipe also. I like both of them, but liked that the previous recipe was more loaf-like too.
Hi Erin! Sorry for removing the previous recipe. There might be slight differences about the amounts but it was very similar to our Skinny Zucchini Casserole. I remember deciding to replace zucchini with green beans. That’s how the previous recipe came out. Hope this helps.
I just pulled this dish out of the oven about 20 minutes ago! I doubled the recipe and added mushroom and extra cheese to my casserole. I’ll be heading to Thanksgiving dinner in a couple of hours and I’m excited to cut into this casserole! Thanks for the recipe:)
I know it’s been almost a year, but since it’s nearly that time again, I was wondering how your family/friends enjoyed the casserole.
Are you making it again this year? Would you mind giving us an update, please? I’d love to know what others think of this after they’ve tried it.
Was it good enough for seconds? 😁
Hi Martha! I’ve updated the recipe myself 🙂 After receiving so many emails from readers about the changes when they made the recipe, I decided to update it with the guidance of our readers’ suggestions. So the original recipe required eggs in the sauce, but this updated version doesn’t. Also, lots of people recommended me to use mushrooms. As far as I know, canned mushroom soup is used in the classic green bean casserole. I prefer to make a sauce myself using mushroom, milk and cornmeal. Super creamy and yummy! Also I top it with onion rings that are fried in little oil after it is baked. As a result, I think the mushroom and onion additions make the recipe even more scrumptious.
I’d love to thank you all for the ideas to improve this recipe!
How many calories would you say are in this dish? I tried adding them up and if there are 4 servings per dish, I got the calorie count to be about 301 calories per serving. To me, that’s not a skinny dish, especially if it’s just a side instead of a main course. Just wondering if you used healthier ingredients to get a better calorie count? It does look tasty but I’m looking for a little less calories in my thanksgiving sides.
Wow this looks delicious!
Hiya Zerrin! I had totally lost track of your blog until today when I ran across it again. I’m glad I did – this recipe looks really good, and we are just starting to have a lot of beans in the garden. Yum!
Hi Donalyn! Great to see you back! This is one of our summer hits. How lucky you are to have fresh beans right from your garden.