Green Bean and Fennel Salad with Bacon Bits and Maple-Glazed Pecans

It’s officially springtime, but Mother Earth is taking her time to come around. Today the grey sky and icy drizzle felt more like early November than late March.

If it were November, we’d be dishing up something hot and bubbly from the Crockpot.

But I can’t tell you how sick I am of soups and stews. Roasted vegetables, too. With lily shoots poking through the brown apple leaves in my yard, I want sprouts. Asparagus. Cress. Greens.



In lieu of shoots and leaves, here at Copywriters’ Kitchen we’re eating huge bowls of Smitten Kitchen’s Green Bean Salad with Fried Almonds. Over the past month, I’ve prepared it at least once a week. To keep up with my family’s voracious appetite, I double the salad recipe. I keep hoping lunchtime leftovers will remain. But it isn’t happening.

My family inhales this salad.

The recipe below is a variation on Smitten Kitchen’s. One difference: I use frozen green beans.



And another difference: My salad includes—shhh!—bacon.

Because, though I’m 98% vegetarian, I reserve the remaining 2% of my appetite for taste-testing carnivorous family member’s dishes. And special recipes, like Green Bean and Fennel Salad with Bacon Bits and Maple-Glazed Pecans.



If you’re a regular reader, you know I’m fanatical about sourcing humanely raised, grassfed meat.

A word about ethically sourced bacon

But I can eat the bacon in this recipe with no guilt whatsoever: It was raised by the Kjarval family at their Spring Lake Farm in Delhi, New York. Ulla Kjarval is a farming advocate and grassfed meat expert. I interviewed Ulla for a magazine story on nose-to-tail cookery. I have complete faith in her family’s ethics and animal husbandry. And their care shows—and tastes—in their delicious meats.

So please buy your pork—and other meats—from a farmer you know and trust. You really don’t want to ingest the questionable meat—not to mention bad karma—of CAFO raised animals.

If you can’t find good, grassfed bacon, simply leave this ingredient out of the recipe—and indulge with extra maple-glazed pecans instead.

You sprinkle the bacon bits and/or pecans over sautéed green beans and paper-thin slices of fennel root, celery and purple onion pickled in sweet-salty vinegar. Splash with olive oil, grind some fresh black pepper over the vegetables and toss.

Green Bean and Fennel Salad with Bacon Bits and Maple-Glazed Pecans

4 thick slices of grassfed bacon, cut into 1/4″ slices
2 pounds fresh or frozen green beans
1 bulb fennel, sliced thinly
2 stalks celery, sliced thinly
1 medium purple onion, sliced thinly
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup ice water
1 tablespoon salt plus extra for salting sautéed green beans
1 tablespoon Demerara sugar
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper
3/4 cup Maple-Glazed Pecans—or use plain toasted pecans or almonds

1. If using fresh beans, wash and cut off ends and reserve beans.
2. In a very large frying pan, fry bacon over medium low flame.
3. When bacon is crispy, remove from pan with slotted spoon. Drain and reserve bacon on a double layer of paper towel.
4. If your bacon is very lean, add an extra tablespoon of olive oil to the bacon fat. When oil is heated and fragrant, throw in green beans, tossing to coat with oil. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Stir and sauté green beans until cooked through and tender—about ten minutes.
5. While the green beans cook, prepare the remaining vegetables. Using a Mandoline or sharp chef’s knife, slice the onion paper-thin.
6. In a small bowl, mix vinegar, water, salt and sugar. Toss the shaved onion in the mixture and set aside in fridge to pickle.
7. Shave the fennel root into ultra-thin slices and place in a small bowl. Squeeze lemon juice over fennel, tossing to coat. Place fennel in fridge to chill.
8. Slice celery and reserve in refrigerator.
9. When the green beans are done, remove them from the frying pan and place them in a large, shallow bowl. Chill green beans in fridge.
10. When green beans are cool, pour onions and pickling juice over the beans. Add fennel, celery, bacon bit and nuts. Drizzle with a tablespoon or two of olive oil, add a few grinds of pepper and toss. Serve immediately.