Szechuan Dry Fried Green Beans (Simplified version)

October 11, 2017 18 Comments

This restaurant style Szechuan green beans is a perfect combination of protein and vegetables, with savory and slightly spicy taste.

There is really a long list of my favorite Szechuan dishes including Mapo tofu, Dan Dan Noodles, month watering chicken, Chongqing Chicken, Szechuan fish etc. And this Szechuan green bean with minced pork, Szechuan unique Ya Cai, garlic and spices is one of the perfect dishes in the dry frying dishes in Szechuan cuisine. Dry frying known as “干煸”in Chinese is a popular cooking method used in Szechuan cuisine. This method can remove the initial water content in the ingredients and help them to absorb the seasonings. There are several recipes on this blog using similar method. Check them by clicking Szechuan dry-fried cauliflower and Chinese style cabbage stir-fry.

There are two ways of pre-frying the green beans, deep-frying with more oil and less time or shallow-frying with less oil and more time. It actually depends on you. But the restaurant usually use the deep-frying method because shallow frying takes around 12 to 15 minutes which is 5 times longer than deep-frying method.

Deep-frying method:

Add around 3 cups of oil in a wok (I love to use wok for deep-frying because the deep center helps to save oil) and then place the drained green beans in.

Fry over middle to high fire until the skin becomes wrinkled. This process may need 3 to 4 minutes.

Other Chinese green bean recipes

5.0 from 1 reviews

Szechuan Dry Fried Green Beans

Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

15 mins

Total time

30 mins

Szechuan style dry fried green beans

Author: Elaine

Cuisine: Sichuan cuisine

Serves: 2

Ingredients

400g fresh green beans, ends removed and cut into 8cm long sections
2 cups of oil for frying
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
pinch of salt
1 tablespoon Szechuan Ya Cai (skip it if this is unavailable)
2 garlic cloves, minced
½ tablespoon minced ginger
6-7 Szechuan peppercorns
3-5 dried chili peppers, cut into sections
Minced pork and marinate
⅓ cup minced pork (possibly with some fat)
1 teaspoon cornstarch
½ tablespoon light soy sauce
pinch of salt
½ tablespoon minced ginger

Instructions

Marinate minced pork with all the seasonings in a small bowl for around 15 minutes just before cooking. Prepare the green beans and drain with paper.
Heat up oil in wok (or you can use a small deep pot) until you can see light smoke on the surface over high fire. Add drained green beans to fry for 3 to 5 minutes over low to medium fire. Stir the beans occasionally during the process. They will be well deep-fried when there are obviously withered. Transfer out and filter the extra oil out.
Leave around 1 tablespoon of cooking oil in wok and pour out the extra. Be carefully during the process as the oil is extremely hot. Add minced pork and fry until for 1 minute until aroma and then put ginger, garlic, Szechuan pepper, ginger, Ya Cai (if you happen to have some in kitchen) and dried pepper. Fry for another 1 to 2 minute. Return green beans along with salt, sugar and light soy sauce. Fry until everything is well combined. Serve hot!

Notes

You can add around ½ teaspoon of sugar to mild the spiciness.

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