SICHUAN DRY FRIED STRING BEANS
A comment from a reader sparked the idea for this dish. When I asked her about it, she said that Sichuan Dry Fried String Beans or Gan Bian Si Ji Dou are made with dried chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns. Sui mi ya cai, a traditional Chinese preserved vegetable dish, is not used in this recipe.
The beans are stir-fried in a mostly dry wok regardless of how you prepare gan bian si ji dou. Hence the term “dry fried” to describe the cooking method. In this dish, the string beans are seasoned with a few simple spices (especially Sichuan peppercorns) and aromatics, and then served. The restaurants, on the other hand, use a shallow frying technique to get the same results in a fraction of the time.
This dish is quite popular in Sichuan.
Sichuan restaurants serve Dry Fried String Beans, a popular side dish. In Sichuan restaurants, it’s always one of our favorite things to order, along with Dan Dan Noodles and spicy sliced beef and tripe (fuqi fei pian), as an appetizer.
As a food-obsessed family, we almost always go bananas and over-order the main courses. Like Ma Po Tofu, Three Pepper Chicken, Twice Cooked Pork, Sichuan Boiled Beef, Stir Fried Potatoes, and Chengdu Fried Rice. ‘Sichuan cuisine’
That’s correct, by the way. Even if there is always an abundance of food, no one wants to give up their favorite. As if that wasn’t enough, the leftovers make another delicious meal the next day. We don’t have to wait until midday to have our Sichuan leftovers for breakfast!
As the name suggests, this dish should be served dry, with no sauce pooling at the plate’s base. Dry Fried String Beans is a Southern classic. To ensure that the sauce coats the string beans, apply high heat after the cooking process to “dry up.” This dish’s incredible flavor comes from the intense flavor of the string beans, which are prepared in this manner. Our bean plants are going crazy, so now is the perfect time to enjoy this recipe!
INGREDIENTS:
- 450g of string beans
- 113g of ground pork or chicken
- 3 cloves of minced garlic
- 3 dried, deseeded, and chopped red chilies
- ¼ cup of vegetable oil
- 1 tablespoon of Shaoxing wine
- 1 tablespoon of light soy sauce
- 2 teaspoons of Sichuan peppercorns
- 1 teaspoon of minced ginger
- ¼ teaspoon of dark soy sauce
- ¼ teaspoon of sugar
- Salt
INSTRUCTIONS:
- Cut the string beans in half after trimming the tough ends (each piece should be about 3 inches long). To remove any remaining water, properly wash them and blot them dry with a kitchen towel.
- Add 1/4 cup of oil and shallow fried the string beans in two batches in a wok that has been heated to medium-high heat. Once they seem wrinkled and barely burnt, they are finished. The string beans should be removed from the wok using a strainer and placed aside.
- Turn off the heat once all of the string beans have been briefly fried. Remove all except 1 tablespoon of the oil from the pan with a scoop. Add the Sichuan peppercorns, ginger, garlic, and dried chilies after lowering the heat (if using). Stir-fry until aromatic for about a minute.
- Add the ground pork next, increase the heat to high, and stir-fry for a brief period of time to break up the pork and lightly brown the meat. The fried string beans, Shaoxing wine, light, dark, and sugar should all be added. Add salt to taste after fully combining everything. Serve when everything has been stir-fried over high heat until any extra liquid has been cooked out.