Chinese Long Beans Stir-Fry Thai Style

Last week, I bought some Chinese long beans thinking I'd chop some up to put into some Thai fish cakes, but since I never got around to cooking it, I ended up using them in a stir-fry dish. The long beans I usually get from my Asian supermarket always comes in giant bunches, a couple of pounds each or more, so I had a lot of leftovers to cook for future dinners.

Chinese long beans, also called yardlong beans, are absolutely healthy for you. They are high in vitamins A and C and folic acid. Each bean is about 2 feet long (not quite a yard in my experience), and they are more slender than the regular string beans you might know of. When used in stir-fries, the long beans wrinkle up as they become more tender.

This dish uses a recipe adapted from one of my favorite cookbooks. I love the Quick and Easy series, and this one is from the Quick & Easy Thai Cuisine: Lemon Grass Cookbook and is titled "Beef with String Beans". Since my kids have a tough time chewing chewy beans, I fried the beans separately first to get them more tender. You can find this dish in Chinese cuisines too, but the sauce would be soy sauce based and not fish sauce based.

Recipe:
Cut into 2 inch slices 2 cups of the long beans.
Chop 4 cloves of garlic.
Cut 1/2 small bell pepper into slivers.

Stir-fry the beans in a bit of oil on medium high for a few minutes (about 5 minutes) and remove from heat.
Add in a pound of ground beef with the garlic and stir-fry on medium high until the meat is cooked through.

In the meantime, prepare a bowl with 2 tablespoon fish sauce, 1 tablespoon sugar, dash of black pepper.
Add the beans back to the beef, and add the bell pepper along with the sauce ingredients. and stir until the beans and pepper are as soft as you'd like.

Quick and easy, for sure, the way I do most of my cooking nowadays.