French Green Bean Salad Recipe (2024)

Fresh green bean salad with a homemade vinaigrette dressing. This is a classic French side dish salad recipe.

🧅 Ingredients

This string bean salad is made with fresh ingredients and a homemade French mustard vinaigrette dressing.

For the full US and metric measurements, see the printable recipe card.

• Green Beans — fresh green beans, either store-bought or home-grown.
• Shallot — or mild young green or red onions. The onions shouldn't overpower the salad taste.
• Dijon Mustard — I like to use grainy french mustard.
• Vinegar — I think this dressing turns out better with natural vinegars, such white wine vinegar or a mild apple cider vinegar. You can also use distilled vinegar if that is what you have in your pantry. Another idea is to use home flavored vinegars such as herb infused vinegar, raspberry vinegar and tarragon vinegar.
• Salt and Black Pepper — freshly ground black peppercorn tastes better. Consider getting a fruity black peppercorn variety (Tellicherry or Malabar) for extra flavor.
• Oil — a neutral oil will do. We use either sunflower oil, vegetable oil or canola oil.

Alternatively to french green beans (aka string beans), you can also use yellow wax beans or purple beans.

🔪 How to make it?

The salad contains only a few ingredients, and it will take you about 15 mins to complete it from start to finish.

Step 1

Cut off ends and discard stringy fibrous green beans. Rinse the beans.

Slice shallots and keep aside.

Step 2

Boil the beans until crisp-tender in a pot of salt water.

Place them into a bowl of ice water after boiling to retain the texture quality of your beans.

Strain your beans and pat dry.

Step 3

Prepare the vinaigrette dressing.

Combine first, vinegar, salt, pepper, and mustard. Then whisk in the oil.

Step 4

Add chopped shallots to the beans in a bowl and pour dressing over all that.

Mix it up a bit and serve up.

🍴 Serving

The green bean salad is a summer classic which I grew up with!

It's super french because green beans are commonly grown and harvested in Frenchgardens from July to September. We call them haricot vert in French.

Usually,in the hotter summer months, people prefer to opt for garden-fresh lighter meals and light salads are served as a small side dish.

French Folks eat a classic quiche Lorraine, omelet, mixed vegetables soups and fish meals with this french bean salad.

Then, of course, there is always bread, cheese, and some good wine.

This bean salad can be frequently seen at social gatherings as well.

You will find it right next to the tabbouleh and peeled tomato salad, waiting to be served with roast beef, Foie gras (duck liver pate) and a crunchy baguette.

You can choose to serve it up warm (right after cooking the beans) or cooled, slightly refrigerated.

🍱 Storage

We typically don't keep french bean salad leftovers in our fridges. French people prepare it freshly and serve a small quantity with their main course meal.

What they do instead, in France, is boiling the string beans and store them in the airtight containers in the fridge for the coming days.

Then they take out some of these boiled beans and top them with a previously prepared vinaigrette dressing, before serving them cooled.

Yet, if you have leftovers of this french green bean salad, I'd simply recommend storing them in airtight containers in your refrigerator for up to 1 day.

They are still ok to eat and that way you can avoid food waste.