Basic Southern Style Green Beans
This is how Granny taught me to cook green beans. My granny was one of the all-time great Southern cooks, the kind you read about in novels about the South. Southern cooking is as much about love and comfort as it is about taste. Everything my grandmother made was served up extra helpings of all three. (My mom is no slouch in the cooking department, either. She makes the best potato salad on the planet.)

Here's Granny's recipe:

"Take a mess of green beans, like the ones we just went out and picked. String 'em, snap 'em, and wash 'em. Put 'em in that big cast iron pot. Throw in some streaked meat, cover with water (be sure to put some salt in the water), throw in a pinch of sugar and boil them until there is no water left in 'em. Keep an eye on the pot and don't let the water all boil out.
We'll boil some fresh corn on the cob and make up some fresh biscuits to go along. But I better make the biscuits, 'cause yours aren't so good yet. But you just keep tryin', you'll learn."

These days my green beans are stringless and I tend to steam them or saute them. But every once in a while, I get the urge to have them the way my granny cooked them and I wonder why I ever cook them any other way. I do use butter or margarine, in place of the "streaked meat" but basically nothing else is different. Try putting new potatoes on top of the beans and let them cook together. Served with a relish of fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and peppers, in a sweet vinegar brine, it doesn't get any better!

Oh, and Granny was right. My biscuits making prowess eventually improved.