Brown Sugar and Bacon Green Beans Recipe

This Brown Sugar and Bacon Green Beans Recipe is a delightfully sweet and savory side dish with only 4 ingredients. It’s a favorite for the holidays and Sunday dinner, but easy enough for the weekdays too.

When I was little, one of my favorite things that my mom made was her pasta sauce. One day, while watching her cook another big pot of her sauce, she had me look away because she was going to add the “secret ingredient”.

It was a short time later that I learned what her “secret” ingredient was — it was sugar! THIS BLEW MY MIND. Sugar was only for desserts and now my mom is telling me that it’s in DINNER? I had no idea.

After many years of cooking for my own family, I know that it’s not uncommon for sugar to make an appearance in home cooking. Even in dishes that you don’t think it’s in. For example, our Shrimp & Asparagus Stir-fry recipe uses a tablespoon of sugar. It’s not much, but it’s used to balance the sour lemon and salty soy sauce flavors in the lemon sauce.

AND, some of our favorite dishes use sugar or other sweeteners as a key ingredient, where much more than a tablespoon is used. Like Slow Cooker Baby Carrots with Honey and Brown Sugar Recipe (uses 1/4 cup brown sugar and 3 tablespoons honey) and Spiced Sweet Potato and Bacon Skewers (uses 3/4 cup light brown sugar, plus 1/4 cup granulated sugar).

The recipe we’re sharing today is a perfect example of another favorite dinner recipe that uses more than a pinch of sugar: Brown Sugar and Bacon Green Beans Recipe. It’s an easy side dish made of fresh green beans that are combined with a mixture of brown sugar, butter, and bacon.

sweet southern green beans

Brown Sugar Bacon Green Bean Ingredients

This sweet southern green bean side dish recipe uses only a few ingredients, one of which is 1/3 cup of brown sugar. It also includes bacon, butter, and of course, green beans. With ingredients like this, even kids who don’t like green beans tend to like this recipe!

Cook and Trim Green Beans

The first step in making Brown Sugar and Bacon Green Beans is prepping your fresh green beans. You can buy green beans by the pound in the produce section of your local grocery store, but when you buy them, they will be untrimmed.

To trim the green beans for this recipe, lay a handle of green beans on your cutting board, laying them all in the same direction with the ends even. Using a knife, cut off the very ends of the green beans. Next line up the top stems of the green beans, in the same way, and cut off the stems.

Place the trimmed green beans in a large pot. Add the water and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium and place lid on the pot. Cook green beans for 8-10 minutes. After removing from the water, rinse the green beans with cold water to stop them from cooking.

Brown Sugar Bacon Glaze

The final step in making Brown Sugar and Bacon Green Beans is to create the Brown Sugar Bacon Glaze, which the green beans are tossed with.

To make the glaze, you’ll fry the bacon in a large skillet until it’s cooked completely and crispy. Once the bacon is done, remove it from the skillet. When the bacon has cooled, chop the strips into small pieces. Discard all but a tablespoon of bacon green.

In the same skillet that you cooked the bacon in, add the butter and brown sugar into the pan with the bacon grease. Heat everything over medium heat until the brown sugar has dissolved, the butter is melted, and both are combined.

Add the green beans to the skillet and gently toss the green beans with the glaze mixture. Sprinkle the bacon pieces over the top of the green beans and gently toss them together.

Serve this side dish warm with your favorite meats like ham and turkey, or with Sunday supper.

Here’s the full recipe, ready for you to print! If you like this recipe, be sure to share on Facebook or pin it to Pinterest.

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