When I say chinese Green Beans what do you think about? I think about all of those great times when my family and I went to the chinese buffet and I snarfed down AT LEAST 2 plates of those amazing garlicky salty green beans. C’mon, I can’t be the only one. (and no, I wasn’t only eating green beans at these restaurants – I somehow turned into a human garbage disposal at every chinese buffet I’ve ever been to my entire life).
Is it possible to recreate these mysteriously delicious green beans at home? You bet! The best part being you know exactly what’s in them (and what’s in them is definitely not MSG unlike the chinese restaurants!) In case you aren’t familiar, MSG is Monosodium Glutamate which is a flavor enhancer that was developed by Kikunae Ikeda. MSG is naturally occuring in tomatoes and cheese, but Ikeda thought it was a good idea to extract the MSG from his naturally occuring food and sell that product – aka MSG. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound so great to me.
I used a family size bag of green beans and added them to a pan. I added in 1 heaping tablespoon dairy free butter. Once they were cooked down a little, I added in garlic.
I diced about 3 garlic cloves up pretty small. I didn’t want to add my garlic in until my green beans had already been cooking as garlic cooks quickly and I did not want it to burn. At the same time I added the garlic in I also added 1 tablespoon gluten free soy sauce.
Once it was all cooked up, I sprinkled some sesame seeds on top.
As you can tell from pretty much every one of my posts for the past week, it’s been about 100 degrees outside every day. It makes me miserable because I’m an outdoorsy person & well, I don’t want to be outdoors at ALL in this weather. I don’t want to heat up my kitchen either because my A/C can barely keep up with this heat as it is! When this happens I rely heavily on my grill & my crockpot.
I threw in homemade sauerkraut (I’m working on getting the recipe - it’s my brother-in-law’s mom’s recipe) and then put a peppercorn pork loin on top. I sliced up some carrots and threw them in as well and let it slow cook all day.
Needless to say, it was perfect with my chinese green beans!
Ingredients:
1 family size bag green beans (in your produce section)
3 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon dairy free butter (Smart Balance is what I use)
1 tablespoon gluten free soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
Directions
1. Add your green beans to a large non stick pan with 1 tablespoon butter. Let cook for about 7 minutes (mixing every so often) on medium heat until they start to get a little soft (the outer skin won’t be as fibrous/hard to chew – it’s totally ok to taste test here ;)
2. Add 1 tablespoon soy sauce & 3 cloves garlic (minced or diced small). Let cook another 2-3 minutes. The garlic will begin to brown and your kitchen will smell amazing. You’re welcome.
3. If the green beans are cooked to your liking, now’s the time to sprinkle on the sesame seeds! I like to take my green beans off when they still have a little crunch to them & that beautiful green color.
