Green Bean Salad with Peaches

If you’re looking for the perfect side situation for all your summer meals, this green bean salad with peaches could be it. Plenty of caramelized onions, peach chunks, and toasted nuts make this salad seem a bit decadent. And then the heat of a serrano chile pepper along with a drizzle of strong oregano-garlic oil levels up the flavor in unexpected ways. Basically, it’s what I’ll be making with all my green beans in the coming weeks. It’s peak summer deliciousness.

Green Bean Salad with Peaches: The Ingredients

Here are a couple pointers as you’re sourcing ingredients for this recipe.

• Green Beans: Look for tender green beans. I used green beans here, but I also look forward to making it with the beautiful yellow string beans we are starting to see at the market this time of year. Either will work beautifully. If I have extra time, I like to trim the tops and tails from the beans, cut them into bite-sized segments, and (extra credit) split them in half along the length. See photo above.
• Nuts: You see toasted pine nuts used here. Toasted almond slices are also wonderful along with the peaches, and I can imagine toasted walnuts or pecans working well if you shifted into a late summer version of the salad. You could swap in roasted tomatoes for the peaches, etc.

• Peaches: Aim for ripe, flavorful peaches that aren’t overly soft. You want them to maintain structure when tossed with all the other ingredients.
• Fresh oregano: You can also substitute fresh marjoram if that is what you have.

The Garlic-Oregano Oil

This is the magic component here. I have you make more of this oil than needed because you’ll never want to be without it. It’s perfect drizzled on just about everything. Drizzle on grilled vegetables, quesadillas, tacos, baked pastas, fresh pastas, bean dishes, green salads. I could literally go on forever.

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