P
American
Green Bean Casserole
Campbell's cream of mushroom soup, green beans, and fried onions — created in 1955 by Dorcas Reilly at the Campbell Soup Company test kitchen. Present on 30+ million Thanksgiving tables annually. The most widely made single recipe in American food.
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I
The Market List
The benchmark for each ingredient, and who stocks it near you. Tap a stockist to go straight to the product.
1 can (305 g)
Campbell's condensed cream of mushroom soup
Not yet stocked in British Columbia
175 ml
whole milk
Your own market
1 tsp
soy sauce
480 g
green beans
cooked, drained; fresh trimmed or canned
Not yet stocked in British Columbia
125 g
French-fried onions
divided
Your own market
Each tap is counted, so the stockist sees the demand Provenance sends them.
II
The Method
1
Heat the oven to 175 °C. In a 1.5-litre baking dish, stir together the condensed soup, milk, and soy sauce until fully combined — the sauce should be an even, pale tan with no streaks of unmixed soup.
2
Fold in the drained green beans and half the fried onions. Stir until every bean is coated. This is the step on which the dish lives or dies: if the beans carry excess moisture the sauce will break and pool; they must be thoroughly drained before they enter the dish.
3
Bake uncovered for 25 minutes, until the sauce is bubbling steadily at the edges of the dish.
4
Scatter the remaining fried onions evenly over the surface and return to the oven for 5 minutes, until the topping is golden and audibly crisp when tapped with a spoon.
III
Quality Hierarchy
01
Reserve — Hand-trimmed fresh market beans, blanched and shocked; a house-made cream of mushroom velouté; hand-cut shallot rings, battered and fried to order.
02
Estate — Fresh supermarket green beans, trimmed and par-cooked; Campbell's condensed soup (the recipe's own specified base); good-quality canned fried onions.
03
Market — Frozen cut green beans, fully thawed and dried; Campbell's condensed soup; standard French-fried onion canisters.
04
House — Canned cut green beans, drained; Campbell's condensed soup; the smallest available canister of fried onions. Serviceable and exactly as Reilly's original was designed to be made.
IV
Sensory Tests
◇Sight. Sauce bubbles steadily at the dish's edges after 25 minutes — the signal that the casserole is heated through.
◇Sight. Onion topping is uniformly golden after the final 5 minutes.
◇Sound. The topping emits a dry, crisp sound when tapped — indicating it has not absorbed steam from below.
◇Where it lives or dies. The dish cannot cross the line of wet beans: excess moisture dissolved into the sauce produces a broken, watery casserole that no amount of baking will recover.
Pillar V
Cross-cuisine parallels are part of membership.
The dishes this one teaches you, across the cuisines — on every recipe.
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VI
What to Pour
A lightly oaked Chardonnay or a dry, off-dry Riesling from the Midwest — the dish's creamy, savoury register calls for enough acidity to cut the soup base without overwhelming it. Sparkling apple cider is the non-alcoholic analogue appropriate to the Thanksgiving table.
The whole pairingPillar VII
Origin and lineage are part of membership.
Where the dish comes from and how it came to be — on every recipe.
Enter · from $49 a year