The Sinosphere · Volume 33, The Mala Basin
Dry-fried green beans / Ganbian sijidou (干煸四季豆)
Sichuan
Illustration
- Time
- 20 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 96 sources in the brief
A Sichuan dish that spread nationally in the 1980s alongside the broader national popularity of the cuisine; no source in this research found a contested city of origin for it, unlike most of this chapter's other dishes.
As tradition built it
Serves 4 as a side. About 20 minutes.
Ingredients
- 250g green beans, trimmed and snapped into 6 to 7cm lengths
- 3 tbsp Yibin yacai, chopped
- a little a little Sichuan pepper
- a little a little sugar
- a little spring onion, chopped
Method
- Dry the beans thoroughly, since any surface water will spit violently in the hot oil.
- Deep-fry at roughly 80 percent oil heat for about 150 seconds until the skin blisters into a wrinkled, tiger-skin texture.
- Separately fry the chopped yacai and Sichuan pepper until fragrant, add the fried beans, and finish with the sugar and spring onion.
Notes
Chinese recipe sources are specific that undercooking the beans is a real food-safety risk, not just a texture failing, so frying them through properly is not optional.
What a modern chef changes
A more thoroughly dried bean and a cured-sausage depth
Rung 4
Method
- Blanch the beans for ninety seconds before frying, shock in ice water, and dry completely in a dehydrator at 60°C for twenty minutes, which drives off far more surface moisture than air-drying alone and produces a more even, more thoroughly blistered skin at the frying stage.
- Grind the Sichuan pepper fresh in the spice grinder immediately before use, as in the kung pao elevation.
- Finish with a small amount of preserved Sichuan sausage, diced fine and rendered briefly in the same pan before the beans go back in, adding a smoked, cured depth this simple vegetable dish does not traditionally carry but which sits comfortably within the cuisine's own logic of building savoury depth from cured and fermented pantry staples.