Fagiolini e patate (Green Bean and Potato Salad)

Name: Fagiolini e patate
Total time: 30 min
Ingredients: 500g 1 lb yellow fleshed potatoes (preferably small to medium sized ); 400g 14 oz green beans (trimmed ); 100ml 1/2 cup olive oil; 2 Tbs 2 Tbs white wine vinegar; 1-2 cloves of garlic, 1 small shallot or 2-3 scallions, (finely minced); A handful of fresh green herbs such as parsley, basil, mint, or marjoram or a mix (finely minced ); Salt and pepper

Frank12 August 2023sides/contorno46 Comments

Fagiolini e patate (Green Bean and Potato Salad)

It’s a testament to the vastness of Italian cookery that, even after 14 years of blogging, I find that I’ve managed to miss an uber-popular dish like this staple of summer tables, fagiolini e patate or Green Bean and Potato Salad. Well, better late than never…

If you haven’t tried this dish, you might think green beans and potatoes make an odd couple. After all, one is round and plump and the other long and thin. There’s some truth in that, but their flavors pair beautifully, and the pairing is a common one in Italian cookery. Among other examples, you may remember pasta al pesto, where the pair are often added to the pot to boil along with the pasta, or the potato and green bean sformato we featured last year.

At its most basic, fagiolini e patate can consist of nothing more than perfectly boiled green beans and potatoes, dressed with olive oil, salt and pepper. But I like to get a little fancier and dress mine with an herby vinaigrette. Even so, the recipe is super simple. So simple, in fact, that you might even say it’s not “blog worthy”.

I think it’s worth writing about all the same. For one, no collection of Italian home cookery would be complete without it. And besides, there are some finer points to preparing this dish, and in fact its very simplicity makes them all the more important to get right.

Fagiolini e patate is lovely as a side dish for a summer cookout or buffet table, a lighter and more colorful alternative to the mayo-laden summer salads you may be more familiar with. If you want something more substantial, you can turn fagioli e patate into a main course or one dish meal by adding a protein like tuna. More about that in the Notes below.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6 as a side

500g (1 lb) yellow fleshed potatoes, preferably small to medium sized
400g (14 oz) green beans, trimmed

For the vinaigrette:

100 ml (1/2 cup) olive oil
2 Tbs white wine vinegar
1-2 cloves of garlic, 1 small shallot or 2-3 scallions, finely minced
A handful of fresh green herbs such as parsley, basil, mint, or marjoram or a mix, finely minced
Salt and pepper

Directions

Place the potatoes unpeeled in a large pot, add enough water to cover them well. Bring the water to a boil. Cooking until the potatoes are tender but not mushy, usually about 20 minutes for medium potatoes.

Remove the cooked potatoes from the water with a skimmer and place in a colander to cool.

Now add the green beans to the same pot along with a good pinch of salt. Boil them until they are crisp-tender. This can take anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes depending on the bean. Remove them to another colander and rinse them with cold water to cool them quickly. Let them drain.

While the vegetables are cooling/draining, you can turn to your vinaigrette. Whisk the oil and vinegar together in a small bowl until they have fully emulsified. Stir in the minced garlic, shallot or scallion, along with the minced herbs and a good pinch of salt and a grind of pepper. Taste and adjust for seasoning, then set aside until needed.

As soon as the potatoes are cool enough to handle but still warm, peel them with a paring knife, then cut them into bite sized pieces (see Notes) and place them in a mixing bowl. Add the green beans. Pour the vinaigrette over the vegetables then toss well, until they are well covered with the vinaigrette.

Give the salad a final taste and adjust for seasoning if need be.

Let the salad rest for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Notes

The recipe for fagiolini e patate is very straightforward, but as mentioned at the top, this very simplicity makes it all the more important to get the technique right. Most importantly, you need to cook the potatoes and green beans to just the right degree of doneness.

Prepping and cooking the potatoes

First off, you want your potatoes tender but still firm enough not to break up when they’re tossed with the green beans and dressing. You’ll see recipes calling for cutting them into pieces before boiling. This saves time but it’s not a good idea, as the potatoes will absorb water as they boil and tend to turn mushy. Better to take a little extra time and boil them in their skins (aka jackets). The potatoes are less likely to overcook, retaining their firm texture and absorbing more dressing rather than water.

It’s also important to get their doneness right, neither under or overcooked. A good trick for testing their doneness: insert a paring knife in them. If it slips out freely, the potato is done. If you can lift the potato with the knife, then it still needs more cooking.

Now there’s the great debate: to peel or not to peel? Most yellow potatoes have paper thin skins/jackets that are perfectly edible, but personally I still peel them as I’m not fond of their flavor, or the texture of the odd bits of peel that tend to come off in the tossing. But that’s a personal preference.

When making fagiolini e patate, I also like to cut potatoes into irregular chunks, “nonna style”. You hold them in one hand and cut them with a paring knife held in the other, cutting at an angle to create angular shaped pieces. It’s easier to do than cutting them “chef style” into perfect cubes or slices, and I find the irregular shaped potatoes take the dressing better and pair better shape-wise with the green beans.

Prepping and cooking the green beans

As for the green beans, you should trim off their ends and, if they’re very long, maybe cut them in half crosswise, though this isn’t strictly necessary. If you cook green beans with any regularity, you’ll know that their cooking times can vary wildly—anywhere between 5 and 20 minutes depending on the type, thickness and freshness of bean. The only way to judge their doneness is a quick taste test, so throw a few more than you need into the pot.

You can play with the ratio of potato to green beans. Most recipes I’ve seen call for a 1:1 ratio by weight. But since potatoes are heavier, I prefer a bit more potato than green bean, as noted in the recipe. This results in a salad that’s a more or less equal balance of potato and bean by volume. But, again, it’s really up to you and your tastes.

The dressing

As mentioned, I like a rather more elaborate dressing for my fagiolini e patate than some do, namely a proper, separately prepared vinaigrette. But it’s a mild one, with only a slight hint of acidity from the vinegar to brighten the dressing. I use white wine vinegar rather than red, so it doesn’t stain the potatoes, or sometimes a squeeze of lemon juice instead. And I’m generous with the amount of dressing. I like a salad that’s well coated with dressing—though not swimming in it.

Usually when alliums are called for in recipes for fagiolini e patate, it’s garlic, but I’m particularly fond of shallots. For today’s dish I opted for scallions since I had some extra on hand, and they were very nice indeed. And I like quite a bit of green herb, as you can see in the photos. They lend a lovely flavor and a bit of color. Here, too, I like to switch things up depending on what I’m in the mood for; parsley is my go to, but sometimes I’ll opt for a sprightlier choice like basil, mint or perhaps marjoram.

If you want to make short work of your vinaigrette, you can use a food processor or blender. Just add all the ingredients to the bowl and give it a whirl. Another old trick is to shake the ingredients all up in a glass jar. Either way, do be careful if you’re using mint, however, as I’ve noticed it can discolor. I’d mince it separately and add it at the last.

Variations

I’ve seen recipes for fagiolini e patate that get quite creative, adding in more vegetables like tomatoes and olives. I’ve even seen recipes with corn, which was something of a shocker since back in the day most Italians I knew considered corn only fit for animal feed. (Or for making polenta, of course… )

Finally, as mentioned at the top, if you want a more substantial dish—one that could serve as a one course meal—you can add a protein. The most common option is canned tuna, well drained of course and broken into chunks. Wedges of hard boiled eggs and cubes of mozzarella are also popular choices. And though not very common as far as I know, it seems to me boiled shrimp or anchovy fillets would also be lovely additions.

There are also versions of fagiolini e patate that are proper cooked sides rather than a salad, usually (but not always) stewed in tomato sauce. But those are really separate dishes that deserve their own posts.

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