These crispy air fryer green beans with garlic is an easy and quick side dish for any main dish. Perfect for busy weeknights!

You might want to check our Sauteed Green Beans with Garlic or Green Bean Casserole.

Air Fryer Green Beans

We absolutely love this recipe for green beans. These air fryer roasted green beans are so quick, so easy, and very healthy! They taste great as an awesome side dish to pretty much anything you can think of. Steak, roasts, fish, or even a wholesome dinner of English-style bangers and mash can all do with a dash of greenery from these awesome beans.

We love making green beans in the air fryer because it’s so simple to make these crispy, tasty beans. Forget long cooking times and dried-out oven-roasted beans, these are moist and delicious every single time.

Cooking with Green Beans

Green beans are most commonly used as a side dish because they are so versatile! Like many other green vegetables, green beans have a subtle taste and a tough texture that responds very well to roasting or frying. Here, we’re approximating the experience of roasting beans in an oven by using an air fryer.

Although there are many ways to serve green beans, we love this recipe. You get to maintain the healthy properties of the beans because you aren’t overcooking them or drowning them in cream or fat. Because we’re using an air fryer, the cooking time is lower than it would be in an oven, and we use less oil than you normally would for roasting.

Beans are high in antioxidants, which are great for your overall health. We recommend for this recipe that you use extra virgin olive oil, which is also very high in antioxidants. That way, you get the health benefits of not one, but two of your key ingredients. It doesn’t hurt that extra virgin olive oil, if you can get it, tastes much better than other varieties.

You'll Need

To make these air fryer green beans you will need green beans, olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic and lemon juice.

How To Make Air Fryer Green Beans

First, coat your beans in olive oil, preferably extra virgin. We encourage you to toss the beans in a bowl or pan with the oil, salt, lemon juice, garlic and pepper to get a nice even coating.

Next, you’ll lay your beans out in the air fryer basket, and fry them up. That’s it!

You’ll want to cook the beans at 370 degrees for seven to eight minutes, depending on how crispy you like them and how many beans you’re cooking. You want them with a soft texture and a healthy crunch, although you can cook them for a little longer if you really want crispy beans.

Can You Cook Frozen Green Beans in Air Fryer?

You certainly can! It’s actually pretty easy if you know what you’re doing. There are two main ways of cooking frozen green beans in the air fryer.

Method 1: If you have frozen green beans, great! They’re easy to use. You can put them into the air fryer at the same temperature, but twice the cooking time. Check your beans as you go, however, to make sure they aren’t over- or under-cooked. We recommend following five-minute increments. If you’re using this method, be sure to toss the beans every five minutes, checking for any excess water in the basket. This water will evaporate into steam and poach, rather than roast, your beans. They will still cook, but they won’t adopt the crispy texture we want for this recipe. If there’s buildup of water in the basket, just drain it to prevent this from happening.
Method 2: You could also try rinsing the frozen beans in some water, allowing them to thaw as you do so. Rinse them in a colander, using cool water. Next, you’ll want to dry them thoroughly using a paper towel. After that, just toss them with the oil and seasoning and proceed as you would with fresh beans. This is the cooking method that best approximates using fresh beans.

Should I Soak Green Beans Before Cooking?

Green beans already have a very high water content. Accordingly, if you have fresh green beans, you don’t need to soak them before you start cooking the way you would with dried beans.

All you need to do is simply wash your beans, dry them, and coat them in your olive oil and choice of seasoning. Greens beans have plenty of flavor and moisture already in them so you don’t need to do much more in order to get perfectly cooked green beans.

Why Are My Green Beans Still Hard After Cooking?

If your green beans are still hard to the touch after you’ve cooked them, it means they’re undercooked. The tough cell walls that give the green bean its crunch and hardness break down when exposed to heat. That means all you need to do is keep the green beans cooking for a little while longer to get the desired texture.

Increments of two minutes at a time should be enough to gradually heat your beans to perfection.

You should try tossing the beans in the air fryer basket often to ensure that heat is evenly distributed among the beans and cooks them all evenly.

Other Air Fryer Recipes to Try

Air Fryer Salmon

Roasted Garlic in Air Fryer

Air Fryer Fish

Chicken Breast in Air Fryer

Air Fryer Teriyaki Salmon

If you make this recipe be sure to leave a comment or give this recipe a rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐! I will be happy to hear from you!