Our Favorite Healthy Green Bean Recipes for Thanksgiving

Modern cooking may champion barely cooked, tender-crisp veggies, but the soft and luscious ones you find in many Southern kitchens, like these super-soft green beans, make a mouthwatering healthy side dish for Thanksgiving dinner.

Here's a new way to delight your green-bean-loving guests. The genius of this easy green bean recipe is in the dressing, which is made with avocado and olive oil that has also been used to fry shallots and garlic.

In this easy green bean recipe, browning the butter before tossing it with the breadcrumbs produces a nice nutty flavor. Serve this green bean dish as a healthy alternative to green bean casserole on Thanksgiving.

Tender-crisp green beans tossed with creamy blue cheese and topped with toasted walnuts make for the perfect Thanksgiving side dish. 

We cook then cool the beans in advance so they can be heated up and seasoned moments before the meal. If you don't like tarragon, substitute dill or leave it out completely.

Whoever said potato salad needs to be cold? For this warm version, new potatoes are roasted right alongside green beans, then tossed in a tangy champagne vinegar and Gorgonzola dressing. If you like, you can toss in some baby arugula.

Sweet balsamic vinegar and nutty Parmesan cheese complement roasted green beans and shallots in this easy and healthy side dish. Roasting the green beans gives them a sweet, caramelized flavor while they still retain some bite. Serve with chicken, fish, pork—you name it. These green beans are also a wonderful addition to your Thanksgiving meal.

Like many Ethiopian dishes, this green bean side dish recipe has endless variations depending on who's cooking it. Green beans are always the star, most often along with carrots and rosemary, though it can also be served with potatoes or cabbage.

This lemon and dill vinaigrette is a natural complement to green beans. To make this recipe serve 10, multiply all the ingredients by 2½: Use 2½ pounds green beans, 3 tablespoons dill, 2½ tablespoons each shallot, oil and lemon juice, 2½ teaspoons mustard and ¾ teaspoon each salt and pepper.

Our go-to trick for this crunchy, mustardy vegan side dish: Use a grill basket—it lets you cook all the things that would ordinarily fall through the grill grates, no skewering required.

This versatile and easy side dish is a tasty way to showcase green beans. We boil the beans briefly before sautéing for perfectly crisp-tender vegetables that don't get mushy.

A much healthier take on the old-fashioned green bean casserole, this version thankfully skips the canned soup and fried onions! Fresh green beans are cooked until crisp-tender and topped with a garlicky-thyme mushroom sauce, shallots and crumbled chèvre.