Blanched purple green beans with fragrant ginger soy dressing 姜蓉豆角

There’s no better way to showcase new beans than with this simple Chinese preparation. I use a combination of purple beans, yellow wax beans, and regular green beans, picked at the height of tenderness, then blanched quickly and seasoned with an aromatic ginger soy sauce. Makes a beautiful little appetizer or side.

Blanching is a common Chinese preparation to cook tender greens and vegetables like broccoli/gailan, asparagus, choy sum, or green beans. You dip the ingredient in boiling water for a brief period (sometimes just 30 seconds) until cooked al dente, drain or shock in ice water, then serve with a simple sauce of soy sauce and oil.

Sometimes, you’ll see aromatics like thinly slivered ginger, scallions, or chiles laid as a garnish on the ingredients. Right before serving, a ladleful of smoking hot oil is poured on top, releasing all the delicious aromas in one vigorous sizzle— this is a method called jiao you (浇油), “dashing oil.”

For this dish, I add the ginger directly to a sauce pan and let it frizzle for a while so that you get all those flavors in the sauce itself.

Chef tips for Chinese blanched dishes or liang cai:

1. Use the most tender and delicate vegetables at their peak flavor and freshness.
2. When blanching, be careful not to overcook the vegetable. Submerge it quickly in cold water to halt the cooking process and capture the vivid color in the pot. The cooking time should be just long enough to bring out the vegetable’s most vibrant color and optimal texture.
3. Mix the seasonings in a separate bowl and taste it to adjust the flavors until just right. Consider the various ways to add it, either drizzling over the ingredients (淋味 lin wei), tossing to coat (拌味 ban wei), or serving on the side as a dip (沾味 zhan wei).
4. Don’t make blanched dishes too far in advance, as they will lose their vibrancy and flavor— you want to serve it immediately after it’s dressed.
5. Chinese cooks usually add a bit of oil to the boiling water so that the ingredient gets coated with some of it when you scoop it out— adds to the flavor and gives it a beautiful gleam and shine.

Notes

*I add an optional amount of sand ginger (沙姜 sha jiang) to the soy sauce. Sand ginger is a kind of rhizome that looks like galangal, used in the southern coastal provinces of China and southeast Asia. In China, we often grated the fresh root for juice, but most Asian supermarkets in the U.S. sell sand ginger as a powder. It is paler in color than ground ginger, and just a pinch in steamed dishes and appetizers adds intriguing flavor—best described as a musky, peppery savoriness with a slightly piney aroma.

Variation

In the spring, I recommend using young asparagus instead of green beans; Cantonese chefs eagerly await the arrival of the first asparagus after the cold, with its delicate, pencil-thin stalks and crisp, sweet flavor. Blanch them for 30-40 seconds until vibrant green, then prepare as below.

Find recipes like this one and more in my new cookbook, The Vegan Chinese Kitchen.

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