schezuan

Szechuan Pork and Green Beans

/ Shane / 2 Comments

The first Friday of the month is reserved for recipes. You can see additional First Friday Food posts here.

The Reason:

Honestly? I think the reason was that we were looking for a recipe to use up ground pork. But this recipe is so good, you’ll definitely want to buy more ground pork, which leaves you more ground pork left overs…it’s a vicious circle.

The Journey:

Have you ever really smelled white pepper? Go smell it and come back. I’ll wait.

Okay, yes, it smells absolutely odious, but does it smell familiar to you? Because everyone around here agrees that it smells exactly like a hog farm. This is not a positive. I can barely bring myself to put it on my food. And yet, this dish is delicious. Maybe you need a little hog farm for the pork, I don’t know.

Schezuan is Chinese for “melt your face off”, or so I assume, because Schezuan food is spicy! This dish is no exception. I suppose you could try to make it less spicy, but honestly I wouldn’t bother. It would really take away from the dish. Serving it over rice helps with the heat a little bit, but if you have trouble with spicy food though, maybe you should avoid it.

The Verdict:

So yummy and so easy to make.

One word of warning though; do not buy Trader Joe’s soy sauce! I love Trader Joe’s, but we made that mistake and we’re still paying the price. We have to mix it in with Kikkoman a little at a time to get rid of it.

The Recipe:

Recipe from myrecipes.com.

  • 1 pound lean ground pork
  • 2 teaspoon cornstarch
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
  • 1 Tablespoon olive oil (+ a few drops of seasame or peanut oil if you have them)
  • 5 cups cut green beans
  • 2 teaspoons minced fresh garlic
  • 4 tablespoons hoisin sauce
  • 2 teaspoons sugar
  • 2 teaspoons crushed red pepper
  • 4 teaspoons soy sauce
  • 4 cups hot cooked brown rice
  1. Combine the pork, cornstarch, salt and white pepper in a medium bowl.
  2. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add pork mixture, beans, and garlic; cook 3 minutes or until pork loses its pink color, stirring to crumble.
  3. Combine hoisin, sugar, red pepper and soy sauce in a small bowl, stirring with a whisk.
  4. Add hoisin mixture to pan. Cook 2 minutes or until thoroughly heated, stirring frequently.
  5. Serve over rice.