Old-Fashioned Green Beans with Bacon and Brown Sugar — 💚😋 These green beans are made extra delish with brown sugar, onions, garlic, and plenty of bacon! Eating your veggies has never been this EASY or tasty, and even the pickiest eaters will gobble them up! Perfect for busy weeknights or as a great holiday side dish for Thanksgiving or Christmas!
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How do you convince picky eaters to eat their green beans? Serve them with lots of bacon, of course! This easy vegetable side dish recipe definitely has the picky eater stamp of approval.
There’s a hint of sweetness from the brown sugar that’s balanced perfectly with the savory soy sauce and bacon. Sweet and savory? Yes, please!
Everything cooks together slowly to really let the flavors develop and marry together. And more importantly, the sweet-and-savory sauce thickens up and is almost caramelized and really coats every single green bean.
This easy bacon brown sugar green beans are perfect for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but it’s just as scrumptious on busy weeknights.
Ingredients for Bacon Brown Sugar Green Beans
You only need eight ingredients to make this family favorite side dish:
- Bacon – I like a thick-cut bacon. You can use applewood or hickory smoked or your favorite type of bacon.
- Unsalted butter
- Onion
- Garlic
- Reduced sodium chicken broth
- Light brown sugar
- Low sodium soy sauce – sub tamari or coconut aminos to keep gluten-free.
- Green beans – fresh green beans are strongly preferred. However, in a pinch, you can use canned green beans.
Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts and more complete directions.
How to Make Green Beans With Bacon and Brown Sugar
Making your new favorite Thanksgiving side dish is easy. Just follow these simple and straightforward steps:
- Cook the bacon. Cook the bacon in a high sided saute pan or Dutch oven over medium heat. Once cooked, remove the bacon from the pan with a slotted spoon and leave the bacon grease in the pan.
- Cook the onions and garlic. Add the butter, mix it with the bacon grease in the pan, and add the onions and garlic, cooking them until softened.
- Add the remaining ingredients. Add the chicken broth, brown sugar, soy sauce, green beans, stir, and simmer.
- Simmer. Bring the mixture to a slow and steady simmer over low heat. Let the green beans cook until they’ve absorbed most of the liquids, about 2 hours.
- Add the bacon and dig in! Once the green beans are cooked, stir in the bacon, let it warm up for a few minutes, and serve the green beans with bacon!
Recipe FAQs
About 2 pounds of fresh green beans are strongly recommended. However, you can use four 14-ounce cans of canned green beans if it’s a last resort. Although, if you do use canned green beans, they won’t need a full 2 hours to cook since they’re already quite soft, as are most canned vegetables. Start checking on them at about 30 to 45 minutes of cook time to see if there’s liquid still in the pan, or if it’s already been absorbed.
Don’t have a full 2 hours to play around with? On a busy holiday or weeknight, I totally get it! You can make the cook time faster here by either:
1. Simmering the pot of ingredients at medium heat rather than low, which will decrease the amount of time needed for the liquid to absorb or evaporate. About 45 minutes rather than 2 hours is what you’re looking at for simmering. Take note that the sauce will not have as much time to thicken and caramelize and won’t have as much intensified flavor, but it’ll still be good.
2. Using canned green beans rather than fresh. This isn’t as favored for me and I would simply crank up the heat as outlined in option 1 above.
While I haven’t tried it, I think making brown sugar green beans with bacon in a slow cooker will be just fine. Cook the bacon first in a skillet, and saute the onions and garlic with the butter, transfer that to your slow cooker and all all the remaining ingredients. I recommend cooking over low heat for about 4 hours but keep an eye on it since all slow cookers vary.
I don’t recommend turkey or plant-based bacon because because you need fatty bacon. The fat from real bacon adds a ton of flavor to the green beans as they cook, and quite simply, turkey bacon or plant based bacon just don’t have the requisite fat for fabulous flavor.
This recipe can easily be doubled! Just double each amount of ingredients and cook the green beans in a larger pan if you have one. If not, you may need to stir the green beans more often to ensure they all cook evenly. It may take slightly longer to cook them through but cook time will not double to 4 hours – don’t worry!
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Green Beans with Bacon and Brown Sugar
Ingredients
- ½ pound bacon, cooked, chopped, and reserve the grease*
- ¼ cup unsalted butter
- 1 small to medium white onion, diced small
- 2 to 4 cloves garlic, finely minced
- 2 cups reduced sodium chicken broth
- ½ cup light brown sugar, packed
- 2 tablespoon low sodium soy sauce, or gluten free soy sauce, tamari, or coconut aminos to keep GF
- 2 pounds fresh green beans, ends trimmed and halved or as desired**
Instructions
- To a large high sided sauté pan or Dutch oven, add the bacon and cook over medium-high heat until the bacon is done; stir and flip intermittently. Using a slotted spoon, remove the bacon, place it on paper towels, and set aside. Keep the bacon grease in the pan.
- To the pan, add the butter (if you want to reduce the amount of butter or eliminate it, that's fine, noting the flavor will suffer a bit), onion, garlic, and cook over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes, or until onions have softened; stir frequently.
- Add the chicken broth, brown sugar, soy sauce, green beans, and simmer over low heat, uncovered for about 2 hours, or until liquid is nearly gone. Notes – You can speed this process up by simmering over medium heat rather than low, and they'll be done in about 45 minutes. However the sauce may not thicken as nicely and the bacon flavor will not infuse as much into the green beans. If you're using canned green beans, simmer over low for 35 to 45 minutes.
- After the the liquid is nearly gone, add the reserved bacon, stir to combine, and cook for about 3 to 4 minutes, just to warm through before serving. Leftover green beans with bacon will keep airtight in the fridge for up to 5 days. Reheat gently in the micro or in a skillet over low heat.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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More Green Bean Side Dishes:
Cheesy Slow Cooker Green Bean Casserole — Fresh green beans are cooked with bacon and a THREE CHEESE sauce in the slow cooker to free up valuable oven space! NO CANNED SOUP nor processed sauces here. An EASY comfort food side dish that’s perfect for Thanksgiving, Christmas, parties, and events!
Best Green Bean Casserole – A healthier, modern, fresher take on classic green bean casserole! No processed soups nor canned ingredients and instead made with fresh green beans, mushrooms, red onions, and a cheesy crispy breadcrumb topping that will have the whole family going back for seconds! Put this on your Thanksgiving, Christmas, and holiday entertaining menus!
Smothered Bacon Green Bean Casserole — Homemade green bean casserole is made even better with the addition of BACON and CHEESE! Fresh green beans are smothered in a savory mushroom sauce before being topped with cheese, crumbled bacon, and fried onions.
My mom used to make a recipe which was very similar to this, and I loved it. If memory serves me correctly, hers had vinegar instead of soy sauce in it. Thanks for bringing back a forgotten memory.
This is one of those super classic, old fashioned type of recipes that never really goes out of style, especially for big holiday meals, and it’s a great side dish for weeknight dinners, too!