Dry-Fried Green Beans With Five-Spice (乾扁四季豆—五香粉)

Ingredients

• 1 kg green beans (string beans)
• 500 g pork mince
• 4 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine
• 2 tsp Chinese 5 spice powder
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 tsp ginger (grated root or powder)
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 red chili (Cayenne)

Instructions

1. Rinse and thoroughly dry the green beans. Then trim the top and tails, removing any tough strings.
2. Finely dice 1/4 to 1/2 of your red chili, depending on your heat preference.
3. Combine rice wine, soy sauce, and 5 spice powder in a small bowl and set aside.
4. Heat 2 tbsp rice bran oil in a wok over high heat. Add the dried beans (if they still have water on them it will spit oil everywhere, so be careful). Toss the beans well to coat with the oil and continue to fry until the beans are blistered and charred. Pick out the beans as they get blistery and reserve to the side in a clean bowl so that they don’t completely blacken and burn. Some beans may take a bit longer than others – you want to try and get an even char across all the beans.
5. Once all the beans are cooked, add the garlic and ginger to the pan and stir-fry briefly until fragrant before adding in the pork mince to cook through. Once the pork is cooked, add the sauce ingredients and toss to coat.
6. Add the cooked beans and chili into the wok with the pork mince and sauce, toss to combine.
7. Serve with steamed white rice as a main, or straight-up as a side dish.