Sichuan Dry-Fried Green Beans: An Adaptable Dish for All
For me, no meal at a Sichuan restaurant (or most home-style Chinese restaurants for that matter) would be complete without a plate of dry-fried green beans (gānbiān sìjìdòu, 干煸四季豆). A classic trap for vegetarians, the beans are usually seasoned with a small amount of ground pork. However, the pork is easily left out (or even substituted for beef if you eat meat but not pork), making this adaptable dish a great one to have in your repertoire.
The key to the deliciousness of dry-fried green beans, meat or no meat, is yacai, a type of preserved leafy vegetable popular in Sichuan cuisine and also used in dandan noodles. The yacai lends the beans a rich hit of umami. It is usually sold pre-diced in small packets.
Look out for these packets of yacai in supermarkets (around RMB 2-3)
Most restaurant versions of the dish have you deep fry the beans first. Now, that may be fine for occasional dining out, but at home it seems silly to me to bathe an otherwise healthy vegetable in oil. Other cooks on the internet seem to agree with me and in fact the most traditional method of cooking this dish does call for the beans to be seared in a dry pan over a low heat for up to two hours (two hours!) until the beans are completely and totally tender, the better to mingle with the flavors of the pork and preserved vegetable. My favorite recipe, from comprehensive blog TheWoksofLife.com, offers somewhat of a compromise, searing the beans for around 20 minutes (depending on the thickness of the beans) so that they are scorched and tender but still retain a bit of their original bite.
Sichuan Dry-Fried Green Beans 干煸四季豆
Adapted from TheWoksofLife.com
Serves four
500g green beans (四季豆, sìjìdòu)
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 dried red chilies (干辣椒, gànlàjiāo)
1 tsp whole Sichuan pepper
1/4 cup ground pork (肉馅, ròuxiàn) (buy more than you need and separate it out into small portions and freeze)
2 garlic cloves (蒜, suàn)
An equivalent amount of fresh ginger (姜, jiāng)
2 tbsp suìmǐ yácài (碎米芽菜)
1 tsp Shaoxing wine (绍兴料酒, shàoxīng liàojiǔ)
1 1/2 tsp soy sauce (生抽, shēngchōu)
A pinch of sugar
1 tsp sesame oil (芝麻油, zhīmayóu)
Method:
1. First, prepare all your ingredients. Cut the beans into equal 1-inch lengths. Peel and thinly slice the garlic and ginger. Break the red chilies into pieces and shake out the seeds. Toast the Sichuan pepper corns in a small pan until you can smell their lemony scent and then remove from the pan immediately.
2. Heat a wok over a high heat until almost smoking and then add the green beans and salt. Lower the heat to medium low and toast the beans for around 20 minutes, storring every now and then. The beans will turn a deeper green and you should see lots of small brown scorch marks on the surface. Once tender, remove from the wok and set aside.
The beans should look like this towards the end of the original cooking
3. Heat the oil in the wok over a medium heat and add the chilies and Sichuan peppercorns. Swirl for a moment or so until the chilies start to darken then add the ground pork and stir-fry until brown. Add the garlic and ginger and stir-fry for 30 seconds, then add the yacai. Cook everything for another minute.
4. Add the seared green beans, Shaoxing wine, soy sauce, sugar, and sesame oil. Turn the heat all the way back up to high and stir-fry for a final minute before removing to a serving dish.
Notes:
1. To make the dish vegetarian, simply leave out the pork. In this case, you can up the amount of yacai by a tablespoon or so if you want.
2. Try and buy thinner beans for this, otherwise, they will take a long time to soften and risk browning too much.
3. The recipe above ends up quite salty (aka delicious), so if you're watching your sodium intake cut down the salt and soy sauce by half.
On another note, tickets are still on sale for our October 15-16 Pizza Fest (yup, that's this coming weekend!) at the Zaha Hadid-designed Wangjing SOHO. Tickets are limited so buy ahead to make sure you don't miss out! Click here to purchase.