Green Beans with Pine Nuts is an easy and healthy recipe that will make a great side dish for any main course! It's a perfect and delicious way to add something green and healthy for your dinner!
Combining green beans with garlic and pine nuts is one of the best and most delicious ways to serve them! Try this flavorful recipe and it will quickly become a family favorite side dish!
This basic recipe will impress you with its simplicity. Green beans with pine nuts is a simple combination that will pair well with any type of the main dish, whether it's beef, pork, lamb, duck, or chicken. For example, serve green beans with creamy chicken thighs or Hasselback chicken.
Variations and Substitutions
This is a GREAT base recipe for simple green beans. It comes together quickly, the recipe steps are easy, and many ingredients can be omitted altogether or replaced with something else similar. The recipe is versatile and easily adjustable to what you have available on hand.
- Nuts. While pine nuts is an excellent choice here, you can easily use many other types of nuts, including pecans, cashews, or slivered almonds. Make sure to lightly toast the nuts for the best flavor. You can also omit the nuts altogether!
- Don't like nuts? Not a problem! Use pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds instead. I also prefer to lightly toast them before adding to the green beans.
- Cheese. While grated Parmesan cheese provides amazing flavor, saltiness, and texture to this recipe, you can easily replace it with other cheeses. Use Asiago, Pecorino Romano, goat cheese, or feta cheese. If you prefer not to use the cheese, omit it altogether.
- Olive oil. This is THE RECIPE to use high-quality olive oil. The simplicity of these green beans will showcase the flavor of high-quality olive oil. If you don't like or don't have olive oil, use butter instead.
How to cook green beans
- Boil. If you like softer green beans, bring a large pot of water to boil, add salt and green beans and boil them (on medium heat) for 5 minutes. Drain.
- Blanch. If you prefer crunchier green beans, bring a large pot of water to boil, and boil green beans for about 1 or 2 minutes until a little tender but still crunchy. Drain.
What goes well with green beans?
- Vegetables. Many types of vegetables taste amazing when combined with green beans. These include potatoes, onions, carrots, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, tomatoes. Add these cooked veggies to the green beans, season with salt and pepper, and you will have a wonderful and satisfying meal!
- Mushrooms. Various mushrooms will pair well with green beans. These include portobello, Bella mushrooms, shiitake, oyster mushrooms.
- Bacon. Cooked and chopped bacon will add lots of flavor to the green beans and pine nuts!
Main courses to serve with green beans
Green beans with pine nuts are such a basic combination of ingredients that they will go well with pretty much any dinner! Here are some ideas:
- Chicken. Green beans pair well with all types of chicken, whether it's grilled, baked, or roasted. Try this zucchini chicken bake or buffalo chicken.
- Duck is another excellent meat that works beautifully with green beans. Try roast duck or duck breasts with cranberry sauce for dinner.
- Pork is a fantastic choice as a main dish for green beans. Check out creamy pork chops with mushrooms and bacon or pork tenderloin with apples and plums.
- Lamb works so well with green beans flavorwise. Try lamb chops with mustard sauce.
Other green beans recipes
- Garlic Green Beans with Parmesan is a basic side dish with lots of flavors, including lemon zest, garlic, and olive oil.
- Garlic and Bacon Green Beans is an easy and delicious way to prepare green beans for the holiday menu.
Green Beans with Pine Nuts
Ingredients
- 1 pound green beans fresh, rinsed, ends trimmed
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 6 cloves garlic minced
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice freshly squeezed
- ½ cup Parmesan cheese grated
- ⅓ cup pine nuts lightly toasted
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper coarsely ground
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of water to boil, add green beans and ¼ teaspoon salt. Cook on medium heat for 5 minutes. Drain the beans.
- Heat olive oil in a large skillet on medium heat. Add minced garlic and cooked green beans.
- Saute on medium heat for about 2 minutes, stirring.
- Remove from heat. Add freshly squeezed lemon juice and stir. Add grated Parmesan cheese and stir. Top with lightly toasted pine nuts. Season with more salt, if needed. Season with coarsely ground black pepper.
Nutrition
The nutritional information on this website is only an estimate and is provided for convenience and as a courtesy only. The accuracy of the nutritional information for any recipe on this site is not guaranteed. It should not be used as a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
Made this recipe tonight - it was delicious!! Will be making this time and again, especially with Italian dishes - thank you!!
Andi, so glad you loved this side dish - thank you for the 5-star review! 🙂
This dish is beyond fabulous! The way the flavors blend of the garlic, lemon Parmesan, and pinenuts blend together is out of this world delicious! A twist in very thinly sliced pieces of thin chicken breast at the end to make it a main meal dish. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had the leftovers the following night I didn’t even bother to warm it up. It was just as delicious, if not better, at room temperature.
Andrea, thank you for the rave review! ❤️ I love that you added thin chicken breast to turn this into a complete meal. ❤️
This is sooo good!! I didn’t even parboil them first, just put them in the skillet with the olive oil and stir fried until the color changed, then added the rest. Excellent!!
Judy, so glad you loved it! Crispy and crunchy green beans are the best! 🙂
Looks wonderful going to try it this year
Norman, enjoy! And, Happy Holidays!
Can thus be made ahead and reheated? I would like to take to a family dinner but can't cook when I get there.
Michael, yes you can make this ahead and reheat. But, I would bring toasted pine nuts in a Ziploc bag and add them only when you are ready to serve otherwise they quickly lose their crunch!
I brought this as an easy side to a friend's Thanksgiving and it was so popular, I got a lot of comments about it. It was different than other, more traditional side dishes, so that's why it got some attention.
Wow, I am so happy to hear this side dish received great feedback! 🙂
Wonderful side dish that I made instead of green beans and bacon since we recently turned vegetarian!
This is a great side dish to make in place of green beans and bacon! Something different!