Dry fried green beans is one of my all-time favorite ways to enjoy green beans. The iconic Sichuan dish starts by using a Chinese cooking technique to cook the green beans until they brown and blister. Then, you’ll coat them in crispy bits of ground pork, punchy preserved mustard greens, a few spicy chiles, and tingly Sichuan peppercorn. It’s a quick, flavorful, Chinese green bean stir-fry you can get on the table in less than 30 minutes.
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What is dry frying?
Dry frying is a Chinese cooking technique that falls somewhere between sauteing and deep frying. In more traditional versions of this dish, green beans get deep frying first, but this recipe keeps things a littler healthier – and faster – by blistering the green beans directly in the skillet or wok you’re cooking in. Dry fried vegetables tend to be ultra flavorful owing to low water content – you evaporate all of the water from the vegetable without adding any back in. What you end up with is a blistered, chewy vegetable that almost melts in your mouth.
Ingredients
- Green beans: For this dish, you’ll want to use fresh green beans. Frozen green beans will have too much moisture to dry fry properly.
- Sichuan Sui Mi Ya Cai: Sichuan fermented pickled mustard greens is the secret ingredient in this dish that makes it so authentic. It’s worth sourcing this ingredient just to taste it – slightly sweet, umami-laden and a little pungent – adding a little to the dish really punches it up. (Psst… if you want to continue experimenting with this ingredient, try these YiBin Burning Noodles.)
- Cooking Oil: You’ll want one with a high smoke point – peanut, canola, or vegetable all work.
- Ground Pork: Be sure to break this up really well with a spatula during the cooking process. You want tiny specks of ground pork (and ya cai) to cling to the craggly, caramelized green beans.
- Garlic: Fresh cloves.
- Ginger: Freshly grated.
- Scallions: White parts only.
- Chili Peppers: While several varieties of chili peppers grace Sichuan cooking, the one you are most likely to find in an Asian market is the Facing Heaven Chili. It boasts moderate spiciness and a strong fragrance.It looks a little like a Mexican chile arbol.
- Sichuan peppercorn: We love this ingredient in our home. It produces a tingling, numbing effect on the tongue and is usually used with chili peppers to help tame the spice and keep you going back for more. You can opt to leave the red peppercorns whole – that would be more traditional, but I’ve found I have a preference for grinding it in small quantities (storing it ground makes it lose flavor fast). The other advantage of grinding it is that you’re less likely to accidentally bite into one or get half of it stuck on the back of your tongue.
- Dark soy sauce: Dark soy sauce is used here to give the pork a little added sweetness, saltiness, and color. You never need much dark soy sauce in a recipe. You can leave it out and give the pork a quick splash of light soy sauce, rice wine, or black vinegar for a quick hit of flavor.
- Light soy sauce: Light soy sauce is saltier and less concentrated than dark soy sauce.
- Black vinegar: Also known as Chinkiang Vinegar, it is often compared to balsamic vinegar, but is less sweet and made from glutinous rice.
- Staple seasonings: Sugar and salt. Use both sparingly, but to taste. I’ve give the quantities that I used to get the flavor that I like.
Substitutions and Variations
- Omit the ya cai. While traditional, this classic Sichuan ingredient can be somewhat hard to source. I get an 8 ounce package from Amazon. You can store this for a long time in the fridge, or even store it in two tablespoon portions in the freezer, thawing what you need for an individual recipe. However, there are many recipes for dry-fried green beans without ya cai on the internet, so you can go ahead and omit.
- Make it vegetarian. If you’re cooking for vegetarian friends, you can omit the ground pork. The ya cai add a nice savory, umami flavor on their own, but you could also mince shiitake mushrooms and cook those as you would the sausage for even more flavor.
- Swap the green beans for cauliflower. You can dry fry a lot of different vegetables. Cauliflower is another great vegetable you can use in this dish.
- Drizzle with a teaspoon of sesame oil. Optionally, you can enhance the flavors of this dish by finishing with a drizzle of sesame oil.
To Wok or Not To Wok?
There was a time when I would consistently use my wok for any and every Chinese recipe. But here’s the catch, I have a special adapter for my gas stove that helps recreate a flame/burner that would be typical of a Chinese stovetop. To do this, I reduce my cooking ability to one burner because I have to take the grate off the top of the stove. It you have an electric burner, I would suggest using a skillet in most Chinese recipes, the sides of your wok will never reach the heat levels you need for proper wok cooking.
For this recipe in particular, I prefer to use a stainless steel skillet for the whole dish because it ensures that the green beans will all get an even cook and maximum char.
How to Make Dry Fried Green Beans with Video
- Remove any excess moisture. Heat to medium high. Then add the green beans WITHOUT oil, which will ensure any surface water evaporates for maximum charred, chewy goodness. This process will take 2-3 minutes.
- Let’s blister some beans! Then, you’ll add 2 tablespoons of peanut oil or canola oil and continue the dry frying process until the green beans are crispy, charred, wilted, and cooked to your desired texture. This process can take up to 10 minutes, so be patient and keep an eye on your pan. If it starts to smoke, you can decrease to medium.
- Grab your one-way ticket to Flavor Town. Remove the green beans and set aside. Then add in your ground pork and fry until crispy and brown. Next, add your aromatics: 3 minced garlic cloves, 3 chopped scallions, 6 re-hydrated chili peppers, ¼ cup ya cai, and 1 teaspoon of ground red Sichuan peppercorn. Stir-fry for up to a minute and pour in the dark soy sauce, stirring to coat the pork.
- Bring it all together. Add the beans back to the skillet and add the 1.5 tablespoons of light soy sauce, 1 teaspoon of black vinegar, and 1 teaspoon sugar. Toss to combine and taste, adding ¼ teaspoon of salt or more to reach your desired level of saltiness.
- Et voila! Serve over rice or as part of a family-style Chinese meal.
How to Serve
- Honestly, this is a great dish served solo, over steamed, white rice. But it would traditionally be part of a larger, family-style spread if being served in China. When I want to turn it into a more substantial meal, I make this with tomato eggs, another quick and easy Chinese recipe.
- Although not a terribly traditional meal, another option would be to make this with Mantou, or steamed bread. Mantou is usually eaten for breakfast, but here you could use it almost like a dinner roll.
- Equally great would be fish-flavored eggplant and kung pao chicken – but that would elevate this to the rungs of a Sunday Dinner for me. As both of these recipes, while not hard, would require quite a bit of kitchen prep.
📖 Recipe
Dry-Fried Green Beans
This classic Sichuan dish starts with blistered green beans coated in crispy bits of pork, punchy preserved mustard greens and plenty of iconic mala flavor. It's fast. It's flavorful. And you can whip it up in less than 30 minutes.
Equipment
- skillet or wok
Ingredients
- 1 pound green beans 400 g, trimmed but not cut
- 2 tablespoons cooking oil peanut, canola, vegetable all work
- ½ cup ground pork
- ¼ cup Sichuan Ya Cai aka preserved mustard greens (optional)
- 3 garlic cloves minced
- 1 tablespoon grated ginger
- 3 scallions white parts only, sliced on the diagonal
- 6 dried chili peppers rehydrated, and cut some of the pieces into halves; These are facing heaven chilies
- 1 teaspoon red Sichuan peppercorn ground
- 1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
- 1 ½ tablespoons light soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon black vinegar
- 1 teaspoon granulated sugar or to taste
- ¼ teaspoon salt or to taste
Instructions
- Heat to medium high. Then add the 1 pound of green beans WITHOUT oil, which will ensure any surface water evaporates for maximum charred, chewy goodness. This process will take 2-3 minutes.
- Then, you’ll add 2 tablespoons of peanut oil or canola oil and continue the dry frying process until the green beans are crispy, charred, wilted, and cooked to your desired texture. This process can take up to 10 minutes, so be patient and keep an eye on your pan. If it starts to smoke, you can decrease to medium.
- Remove the green beans and set aside. Then add in your ½ cup ground pork and fry until crispy and brown. Next, add your aromatics: 3 minced garlic cloves, 3 chopped scallions, 6 re-hydrated chili peppers, ¼ cup ya cai, and 1 teaspoon of ground red Sichuan peppercorn. Stir-fry for up to a minute and pour in the dark soy sauce, stirring to coat the pork.
- Add the green beans back to the skillet and add the 1.5 tablespoons of light soy sauce, 1 teaspoon of black vinegar, and 1 teaspoon sugar. Toss to combine and taste, adding ¼ teaspoon of salt or more to reach your desired level of saltiness.
- Serve over rice or as part of a family-style Chinese meal and enjoy!
Notes
Looking for more great Asian-inspired recipes?
You’ll love:
- Honey Sriracha Shrimp (Another 30-minute dinner recipe)
- Chicken Adobo with Coconut Milk
- Crispy Gochugang Cauliflower Bites (Thank you, Air Fryer!)
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
