Accompanyment
Please select an accompanyment from the alphabetical list.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Southern Style Greenbeans
I was spending a nice afternoon in Berkeley, California with a friend when we struck upon this recipe. My friend was a blues singer who toured all over the South singing in little "hole-in-the-wall" places. She did this for years until cigarette smoke ruined her voice. On this day she was telling me about a soul food restaurant that she liked. They served up a batch of greenbeans that she just had to have everytime she was in that town. After a few experiments this is what we came up with.
Procedure
This should go really fast. If you have spent more than five minutes cooking this recipe then something has gone horribly wrong.
Fry off the bacon or lardon. Preserve a bit of the grease for frying the greenbeans, enough to coat the frying pan. Keep the fried bacon in the pan.
Throw the greenbeans into the hot pan. Watch out for the grease splatter and smoke. Smoke is OK because in this case it will add flavor to the final product and you won't be cooking the greenbeans for very long. Do not turn down the heat.
Put all of the remaining ingedients into the pan right on top of the greenbeans. Mix and turn the greenbeans to coat them and combine the ingredients. Pull the greenbeans out of the pan and serve immediately when the greenbeans begin to get coated in a thick black sauce. The brown sugar will help to create a very sticky sauce which is exactly what you want. When you plate the greenbeans the sauce should not run onto the plate.
Tricks
I generally use my largest wok for this recipe. If you have to use a frying pan use your largest and fry the greenbeans in small batches. If you over crowd the pan they'll steam and get mushy. The best part of this recipe is that the beans stay crisp.
I was pretty forgiving in this recipe on the amount of spice. I generally like things hot as hell. So feel free to double or triple the amount of spice.
If you have a favorite hot sauce or chili paste use it in this recipe. If you are using a sauce, they generally have vinegar in them, so add more sugar and reduce the amount of broth.
If you think you have too much liquid in the pan, pull the beans out and set them aside. Continue cooking the sauce mixture until it gets thick and bubbly, you want the sugar to burn. When it's sticky throw the beans back in, coat them quickly and serve.
Ingredients
Conversions to European measurements can be found here!
For 4 people
- 1 pound Bluelake greenbeans (washed and stemmed)
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 4 tablespoons chicken broth
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1 cup lardon or smoked bacon