Sautéd Ginger Garlic Green Beans

Jen Isham went home on The Next Food Network Star premiere this Sunday for making green beans for a room full of Food Network stars. A simple search of their recipe index reveals that they have 186 sautéd green bean recipes. This doesn’t even begin to go into the total 1201 recipes that involve green beans on the site. What they’re saying is you can make green beans, just do it at home and not for a room full of Food Network stars. In fact, you could make THESE green beans. At home. For your family. Or your friends, if they aren’t Food Network stars, of course.

These are not my beans, grown at my house in my dirt. These are someone else’s beans. My beans have yet to produce anything. They’re coming along, though. All in due time. Gardening is about persistence and patience.


You want to break or cut off this end.


Not this end. That would just be a waste of green bean.


This end with the stem.


Onion, ginger, garlic.


Dice the onion into teeny, tiny bits and mince the garlic and ginger. I had Ole help with this because I was busy making potstickers. Turns out Ole likes to eat potstickers but he is not a fan of actually making potstickers because – gasp – they stick to the pot.


When you blanch the green beans you only want them in there for 2-3 minutes. Then pull them out and rinse them with cold water. This will make sure they stay nice and bright green and don’t get dull and bluish. You could also stick them in a bowl of ice water.


While the green beans are chilling, start heating your oil.


Start with the onions, garlic and ginger, followed closely by the green beans. The idea is to keep the green beans continuously moving in the pan. So, stir them, shake them, slide the pan back and forth across the burner. Keep it moving.

When the onions start to turn color, add some rice wine. You could also use cooking wine, a white wine, sherry. It all depends on your taste. I have this rice wine from previous adventures in Asian cuisine. Considering the menu, I stuck with this. It only takes a minute or two more.


We like to serve a vegetable (or two) with all of our meals, but sometimes themed meals can be hard to come up with something appropriate. What do you eat with General Tso’s chicken, for example? Regular green beans don’t really cut it, but the addition of ginger and rice wine make for a wonderful compliment to several Asian-inspired meals. This particular meal happened to be white rice, potstickers, Asian jerk red snapper and the beans.

For more green bean recipes, visit Tammy’s Recipes In-Season Swap.