Food You Can Eat: Pork and Beans Stir Fry

...two kinds of beans if we're being precise

26/3/24 HammerZeitgeist 13

This is a salt forward dish. I love it but à chacun son goût. My mom traditionally makes it without the yard-long beans. I’m always trying to add vegetables to my recipes. I recommend adding chopped garlic and ginger maybe even a shallot. I don’t because of the kids and laziness.

INGREDIENTS

  • 2lbs ground pork
  • 1 bunch Yard-long beans
  • 1/2 cup soy bean paste (or less)
  • 1 tsp sugar (optional)
  • Garlic, ginger, shallot (optional)
  • Vegetable oil

DIRECTIONS

  1. Clean then cut the bottoms and tops of the yard-long beans. Chop into bite sized pieces.
  2. Heat up a large frying pan/cast iron skillet/wok on high.
  3. Add oil and stir fry the pork until almost cooked through.
  4. Add the soy bean paste and sugar (and other optional ingredients). Continue to stir fry until pork is cooked through.
  5. Add the yard-long beans. Add more oil if needed.
  6. When the yard-long beans are bright green and blistered (mine didn’t blister this time because the pan was too crowded). Take off the heat and service with rice.

SOME NOTES

Yard-long beans are sold in large bunches. That’s why the recipe requires 2lbs of pork. You could substitute them with a smaller amount of string beans and 1lb of ground pork. Here’s an interesting article about Yard-long beans. I like them because they are less work to prepare than string beans (less heads need beheading). They are generally more firm and less sweet. The bunch I got this time was kinda sad.

https://theveganatlas.com/a-guide-to-chinese-long-beans-a-classic-asian-vegetable/: Food You Can Eat: Pork and Beans Stir Fry

The soy bean paste is very salty. I think I get around five meals out of one bottle.

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13 Comments

  1. A simple, easy and tasty dish.

    The one time I brought this home from a local Chinese restaurant, the family tore into this one and ate it all.

    • It’s one of those dishes where a little can go a long way because you need more rice to balance out the salt….unless you are like me. I can devour the whole dish without rice 😆

  2. I’m down with pork and beans no matter what form it takes.

    • Because life’s simple pleasures are the best!

  3. I’ve gotten into roasting or frying green beans until they get that blistered skin. It’s definitely better than regular boiling/steaming.

    • I agree. Blistered vegetables are yummier than steamed/boiled ones.

  5. I grew yardlong beans last summer! They were so easy to grow, and outperformed my regular length green beans. They did attract a lot of wasps for pollinators, but they were super chill wasps so didn’t bother me beyond some initial panic moments.

    • I assume those plants must get pretty tall, much bigger than bush beans.

      • They just vined like regular pole beans. I had them on a large sideways trellis kept at a height so the beans didn’t hit the ground.

    • That’s so cool! What dishes did you cook with them?

      • Curries. Stir fries.

        Best thing was braising with onions, sweet peppers, and some potatoes. The beans held their texture really well during braising where my green beans would just fall to mush.

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