China · Chaoshan
Green Beans with Minced Pork and Olive Vegetable
French beans fried until soft and glossy with minced pork, garlic, bird's eye chili and olive vegetable. The savoury, faintly funky seasoning is Chaoshan in origin.
Olive vegetable is a Chaoshan preserve made from olives and chili, and it turns a plain stir-fry into something with a savoury depth that plain salt cannot reach. The beans themselves need long, steady cooking until they are genuinely soft, which is the part cooks most often rush. Sliding the wok and then adding cold oil keeps the minced pork from sticking.
Ingredients
- french beans220 g
- pork belly100 g
- olive vegetable20 g
- garlic10 g
- bird's eye chili10 g
Directions
- 1
Wash the french beans, pull off the strings completely, then cut them into evenly sized pieces and set aside.
- 2
Crush the garlic and chop it finely.
- 3
Cut the bird's eye chili into evenly sized pieces and set aside.
- 4
Skin the pork belly and chop it into mince, then set aside.
- 5
Heat the wok, add 20 ml oil and swirl it round, pour the hot oil back out, then add 10 ml cold oil. This is the famous hot wok and cold oil, and it is mainly to stop the mince sticking.
- 6
If you do not have an oil pot to store the poured-off oil, skip the swirled step: add the oil, put in the mince and fry over low heat for two minutes to render out the pork fat.
- 7
Once the mince smells good, add the garlic, olive vegetable and bird's eye chili and fry until fragrant.
- 8
Add the french beans and stir-fry over medium-high heat for at least 5 minutes, making sure they are cooked right through, otherwise they can cause food poisoning.
- 9
When the beans are cooked, drizzle 2 ml soy sauce down the side of the wok, then add 2 g salt, 1 g chicken bouillon powder, 1 g white pepper and 0.5 g sugar.
- 10
Stir-fry until the seasonings are evenly combined.
- 11
Turn out and plate up.
Source: HowToCook · WorldBite adaptation · Unlicense source text; bilingual recipe adapted by WorldBite.