Green Beans (Grandpa Style)

Grandpa's Green Beans
4 cups fresh green beans
1/4 cup water
4 slices bacon
salt to taste

Rinse beans under cold water, snap stem ends off. Place in a pressure cooker with the water. Cook until full pressure is reached then turn down heat and continue cooking for 5 minutes. Take off heat and hold pan under running cool water until pressure releases. Remove lid and return pan to stove. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently. The water will evaporate and the beans will break up quite a bit. While they are cooking down, use kitchen shears (or scissors) to dice the raw bacon into a hot frying pan. Cook bacon until brown and crisp. Stir bacon and drippings into beans. Add salt to taste.

Hints: These beans can be cooked without a pressure cooker. My Grandpa Mangus cooked the beans for long time(an hour or two) in a sauce pan, adding water a bit at a time as needed to keep them moist. My life seems to be lived at pressure cooker pace. Use flat Italian green beans (Roma) for the best taste and texture. I plant a couple of rows every spring just for this dish. I often use the bacon from Costco that is already cooked and just needs to be heated up. There is less bacon grease this way and that is a plus for your cholesterol but a minus for flavor. Your call. Sea salt is great, but kosher salt is fine too.

Thanks to Grandfathers that cook! I was in Reid Austria at Cafe Alexandria and Amy was translating the menu for me, she told me of a pork dish accompanied by "Grandpa's green beans, you know, with bacon." I was surprised to hear that the old family recipe my father and my grandfather made every summer was being used in Upper Austria! A native woman we were with explained it was "a traditional dish the poor farmers would eat for dinner." My family came to the US from Germany. And they were poor. It made perfect sense.