Hortense's String Bean Casserole

GLUTEN-FREE

Summer is a time of recipe testing and heavy-duty eating! Something about the season makes me want to delve into my Southern roots and produce dinner after dinner of "meat and three or fours." 

Here is an extraordinary recipe (discovered during my summer cooking spree) that deserves mention -- it's a classic from Hortense Jones, the legendary cateress of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. I've made a few modifications to the original recipe to make it gluten-free. Enjoy! My family LOVED this dish. You'll never again make green bean casserole with the canned soup and french fried onions!!

Ingredients:

2 packages of 10 oz. frozen cut green beans

2 T salted butter

2 T Thomas Keller's C4C Gluten Free Flour**

1 t. salt

1/4 t. pepper

1 T sugar

1/2 pint of sour cream

1 medium onion, grated on a microplane

dash of garlic salt

1 cup freshly grated Swiss cheese

1 cup freshly grated cheddar cheese

1 cup gluten-free Corn Chex cereal

2 T salted butter, melted

9 x 13 glass casserole, buttered or sprayed with cooking spray

** available from Williams-Sonoma

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. 

Cook green beans per package instructions and drain well. Set aside. Melt butter, remove from heat. Add flour, salt, pepper and sugar to butter. Whisk ingredients together. Add 1/2 pint of sour cream and grated onions and garlic salt to mixture. Return to heat and stir until thickened. Remove from heat and add to bowl with green beans. Stir well. Pour bean/onion mixture into greased casserole dish. 

Combine sour cream mixture and cooked green beans.

Mix cheddar and swiss cheeses in a medium bowl. Sprinkle over beans in casserole dish. 

Sprinkle Swiss and Cheddar cheeses over the green bean mixture. 

Put Chex cereal in large ziploc bag. Crush with fist until all squares are broken up into very small bits. Add 2 tablespoons of melted butter to the bag and shake well to distribute the butter. Sprinkle buttered cereal on top of the cheese. 

Bake at 325 degrees for 20 minutes or until bubbly. 

Sprinkle with Chex cereal and you're ready to bake it!

My family ate this up so quickly, that I didn't have a chance to snap a photo of the finished product!