Taze Fasulye: Turkish-style green beans recipe

When the weather gets warmer, it's Taze Fasulye time in Turkey! 

Although that's not quite true, because of course every household stocks up on green beans for the winter and freezes them accordingly or preserves them with tomato sauce. In Turkey, it is actually taze fasulye time all year round. We also made our taze fasulye recipe with the last frozen green beans from last summer. In short, the introductory sentence was just an icebreaker :-) But we have a really delicious Turkish-style green beans recipe for you, which is without question one of our favorite dishes.

What is taze fasulye?

As with many Turkish recipes, this recipe is named after the main ingredient (think: Nohut/chickpeas, Kabak/zucchini, Bamya/Okras, Ispanak/spinach or Kuru Fasulye/bean stew). Taze fasulye are green beans, but they don't look quite like the usual green beans in the West. They are not thin green beans, but flat green beans a good 1 cm/0,5 inch wide.

These are cut into pieces before preparation and then the recipe for the Turkish-style green beans can begin. The Turkish-style green bean recipe is another great example of few ingredients and lots of flavor. We have often heard that taze fasulye (sometimes also called yesil fasulye) with rice is someone's absolute favorite meal. And even those who don't like green beans love the brine of taze fasulye too much. Note that this Turkish green beans recipe is very often prepared with meat. Today, however, we are presenting a taze fasulye recipe without meat. 

What goes into the taze fasulye recipe?

You'll soon see how simple the Turkish-style green beans are. While garlic is often omitted from vegetable recipes, we believe that lots and lots of garlic are essential for green beans Turkish-style. Apart from that, the Taze Fasulye recipe also includes: onions, tomato paste, paprika, tomato, good olive oil, salt and pepper – so easy.

What is the best way to serve the Turkish-style green beans? 

Turkish rice is usually served with Turkish-style green beans. Add a little yogurt and you're good to go. Alternatively, you can also eat the taze fasulye with bread. This time we served it with a simple bulgur pilaf and ayran – a simple, really incredibly tasty and healthy meal.

Tips for the Taze Fasulye recipe

In the West it is usually the case that the green beans should still have a little bite to them. When my Austrian grandma (in-law) ate our taze fasulye for the first time, she was almost outraged at how soft the green beans were. But that must be the case with the Turkish recipe! Many households even use a pressure cooker for Turkish-style green beans to ensure that the green beans are really soft.

In addition, one thing is particularly important for achieving a lot of flavor in this recipe: good olive oil. 

For green beans with meat, we would rather use sunflower oil and butter. But in the vegetarian version, the Turkish-style green beans recipe deserves good olive oil and lots of it. Our olive oil smells so strong that when we sautéed the onions, the whole apartment smelled like olives. The better your olive oil, the better your Turkish green beans recipe will taste. 

We also used quite a lot of olive oil; a good 10 tablespoons. With 3 portions, that's over three tablespoons per portion. However, the olive oil is what gives the dish its flavor and apart from that, the taze fasulye recipe only uses vegetables beside that. However, you can adjust the amount of olive oil as you wish, Afiyet olsun :-)

Taze fasulye recipe: Turkish-style green beans recipe