Ree Drummond's Legendary Green Bean Casserole

My family is like a lot of families when it comes to the Thanksgiving meal. They would be blissfully happy if we had the exact same thing year after year after year. And while I love the Thanksgiving classics, this year I thought I would take a handful of legends from the meal and give them a little update. In my humble opinion, green bean casserole is absolutely mandatory at Thanksgiving. And I already make a version that is from scratch. So I'm going to dive into that one and give it an even more delicious update, starting with the best mushroom sauce you have ever tasted. I've been slicing up some cremini mushrooms and I'm going to get these into a skillet with some butter and oil. I am such a fan of mushrooms. I just think they are one of the most important ingredients in the world. To the mushrooms, I'm going to add some finely diced onion, quite a bit. This is going to make a pretty generous casserole. Some sliced fresh garlic and some chopped rosemary. Probably my favorite Thanksgiving herb. All right, I'm going to cook this mushroom mixture until the onions are soft and the mushrooms are starting to brown. It'll just take a few minutes. Oh boy, this is looking good. Now that the mushrooms are starting to cook, I can add some salt and pepper. If you add salt right when you put the mushrooms in the pan, they can cause the mushrooms to give off too much water and it's hard to get them brown after that. And now I'm going to add a little more butter and swirl it around the pan and let it melt. And I'm going to turn this into a really, really scrumptious cream sauce. Oh, that smells so good. And I'm going to sprinkle in some all-purpose flour and I'll mix it in with the mushrooms and onions. I need to stir this around until the flour has a chance to cook and the roux is starting to brown. So give me a couple more minutes to do that. All righty, that roux has cooked. It looks perfect. And now it's time to add the liquid in, which is going to make the sauce. So first, some low-sodium chicken broth. And as I pour it in, I want to scrape the bottom of this skillet because there are all those glorious bits of flavor from the garlic and the onion and the mushroom. And this is a creamy mushroom sauce. So I'm adding cream. All right, so it's just about bringing up the heat and letting it bubble just a bit. And oh my gosh, it's beautiful and thick. Look at this. I mean, you can just call that cream of mushroom soup, basically. Now I'm going to assemble the casserole. I have some blanched, fresh green beans. I let them cook for about three minutes and then I took them out, drained them, and plunged them into ice water to stop the cooking. And then the green beans keep their color while the casserole bakes a little better. And now for this gorgeous sauce. And I'm going to pour half of the sauce over half of the green beans. Glory, glory, glory. I am in love. And I don't care who knows it. All right, I'll spread it out so the mushrooms are kind of evenly distributed. And I'll add the rest of the green beans. And you guessed it, the rest of the sauce. Oh, this looks so good. Before it goes into the oven, I'm going to add some freshly grated parmesan. You can use gruyere, you can use cheddar, you could do pepper jack. Honestly, whatever cheese you like, it works. All right, this is going to go into the oven. I'm going to bake it at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Then I'll take it out and let it rest. And then I'll finish it with a gorgeous topping. The casserole's out of the oven. It looks magnificent. So the original green bean casserole has store-bought canned fried onions over the top. But I made a batch from scratch. Hey, I'm a poet and didn't know it. Here's how I made these. The onions are easy. I just put two large sliced white onions in a bowl along with half a cup of whole milk and mix them together. Then I dredged half of them in a mixture of one cup of flour and two teaspoons of seasoned salt. Shook off the excess and dropped them into a high-sided, heavy-bottomed pan with two inches of oil heated to 375 degrees. I fried them for a minute until they were golden and crisp. Took them out onto a paper towel-lined sheet pan and dropped the second batch in. I gave them a minute to crisp up and took them out to cool. Honestly, the most challenging part of making this casserole is making these onions. Not because they're complicated to make, but because you have to resist the urge to go get the ketchup out of the fridge and just snacking on all of these before the meal begins. They are that good. All right, and then I'm going to sprinkle on some parsley just to give it a little pop of green and a little fresh flavor. This is hilarious. I love this huge mound of fried onions and I want to show you what this looks like. I love it because it's just really textured and you get these great big onions. See how bright green those green beans still are and they're nice and tender so you just get the best of both worlds. You definitely want to make sure you get plenty of the mushroom sauce and plenty of the onions. All right, legendary green bean casserole. Make this for your Thanksgiving feast this year. It will definitely be the star of the show. Sorry turkey.