Good frozen string beans or edamame recipe

This is a recipe so good and so simple that I thought I had to share it with the world. I am not sure if it is an official recipe, and I have not really checked to see if other people cook frozen vegetables this way. I came up with the recipe out of sheer laziness - one evening I did not want to bother with boiling water and the kids were screaming so I just spread out a bag of green string beans into glass lasagna dish, drizzled with a little sesame oil, added a pinch or two of kosher salt, stirred it all up to spread the oil onto all the beans and popped it into the oven. I did not even preheat the oven. I just baked 'em at 350 degrees for about 10 to 15 minutes. I was shocked when they ended up delicious and the kiddos gobbled them all up. Still crunchy, tasted great, not 'watery' from getting steamed or boiled, and best of all just a little bit of salt and sesame oil went a long way. Scarily enough the beans tasted fresh out of the garden.

Since then I've refined the recipe a bit and have tried it with other frozen vegetables. It continues to work great great with minimal effort. I also tried it with edamame (the kind with the shells on) and it ended up restaurant quality. Perfectly salty with just a hint of sesame oil. You squeeze one end of the pod and pop the beans into your mouth. The flavor comes off of the pod while you squeeze it into your mouth. It's sort of like eating crab or lobster legs.

The trick to the recipe is to not overcook the beans or edamame, nor to use too much salt or sesame oil. To be honest, I ended up with too oily overcooked beans on my second try. I learned to really go light on the oil - maybe a table spoon or 2 max (I don't measure actually), and only 1 big pinch of salt (maybe 1 to 2 teaspoons). As I said, a little of each seems to go a long way. And ordinarily I'm a lover of salt and oil, so you can trust me on this. As regards cooking time - I've found that 15 minutes is about max, even with the oven going through the preheating after adding the veggies. Basically, I've found that the veggies are done when they are heated through, and I do not let them get to the 'boiled' stage.

On that last note, I did wonder If I am actually eating the veggies raw. So I checked the bags and noted that they parboiled the veggies before freezing them. So they have been precooked. But the green beans did warn that I needed to cook them to an internal temperature of 160 degrees. My recipe probably does not do this - so I will say attempt my recipe at you own risk. If you dare, I do think you'll like it. Patrick