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With fresh green beans, crunchy topping, and savory sauce, my Easy Healthier Green Bean Casserole is a deliciously healthy take on a classic holiday side dish. The flavors you love but with less fat and calories.

You’ll still have room for pie!

Excited About Gathering Again!

Maybe it’s because I’ve been so wrapped up in writing my next book, but November really snuck up on me this year. It’s hard to believe that Thanksgiving is just a few weeks away.

We’ll be celebrating the holiday at my sister’s house this year, and the whole western branch of the family will be joining us. Another sister and her husband are even flying in from Florida! Since we weren’t able to get together last year, I’m really looking forward to it. I think we all are.

My sister and her daughter are taking on the bulk of the cooking. Because I am on deadline for my next novel, they said I didn’t have to bring anything.

It’s sweet of them to want to take the pressure off me, but I really do love to cook. So, I just can’t bring myself to sit it out entirely. And even though Thanksgiving is a full-fat holiday, I’d like to stick to a healthy eating plan if possible. A few indulgences are fine, but I don’t want to go completely off the rails.

With that in mind, I set out to transform a holiday classic by making an Easy Healthier Green Bean Casserole.

An Easy Healthier Green Bean Casserole Everybody will Love

Green bean casserole is one of those Thanksgiving sides that people either love or hate, right up there with creamed onions and candied yams. Or, as my Uncle Matt refers to them, The Dreaded Candied Yams.

Opinions will differ, but I really do like green bean casserole. However, I’m not so crazy about the amount of fat and calories it contains. (I’ll save that for the dessert course, thank you very much.) My husband, on the other hand, hates green bean casserole. In fact, he hates green beans period.

So, I was very surprised and more than a little pleased, when he tried my Easy Healthier Green Bean Casserole and pronounced it to be “really good!” At first, I thought he was being polite. But when he served himself seconds, I knew I had a winner!

Great Inspiration and a Few Adjustments

So how did I come up with the recipe for this wondrous dish, you ask? An Easy Healthier Green Bean Casserole that even hardcore green bean haters love?

I took the inspiration for my version from one of my favorite cookbooks, The Skinny Taste Cookbook, which was written by one of my favorite food bloggers, Gina Holmolka of SkinnyTaste.com.

Gina’s lighter version of green bean casserole sounded really good. Though I didn’t use as much oil, I thought her idea of using cooked shallots and bread crumbs in place of canned fried onions was genius!

I made some changes in how I made the green beans and mushrooms too, sauteing them in a modest amount of butter. Even a little butter makes the mushrooms taste so much richer.

But the biggest alteration I made to the inspiration recipe was the sauce. Call me old-fashioned, but to me, it really can’t be green bean casserole if it doesn’t include a can of cream of mushroom soup. However, I did opt for Campbell’s Healthy Request Cream of Mushroom, which has less fat and calories but just as much flavor.

I also added a little bit of marsala. It gave the sauce depth and a more sophisticated flavor but didn’t require me to make a sauce from scratch. It couldn’t have been simpler. That’s the easy part of my Easy Healthier Green Bean Casserole.

It’s a dish that lives up to its name. It’s easy to make, lighter than the classic, and tastes just as good. In fact, I think it tastes even better!

Give my Easy Healthier Green Bean Casserole a try. It might just become your new holiday favorite!