What You Need
To make this Din Tai Fung-inspired garlic green beans, you will need the following:
Green Beans: Green beans are also known as string beans.
In Chinese restaurants, you’ll typically find Chinese long beans, which you can use for this recipe as well. These long beans are exactly as the name suggests. They are long, usually 18 inches at harvest. They are cut into shorter pieces before cooking.
Fresh Garlic: Can’t have a garlic recipe without fresh garlic.
Vegetable Oil: Perfect for flash frying, vegetable oil ensures crispy perfection as it has a high boiling point. You can also use other neutral oils with high boiling point like peanut or canola oil.
Don’t use olive oil when cooking Asian food. It has a low burning point and it’s the wrong flavor profile.
Salt: I’m using fine ground sea salt.
Mushroom/Chicken Bouillon Powder: You can certainly stop at the salt but lets take it up a notch with a Vietnamese home cooking secret ingredient, bouillon powder.
Two popular Vietnamese bouillon powders that are available in the States are chicken and mushroom/vegetable (the go-to for a vegetarian option). Technically, these powders serve as a soup base, but it’s commonly used as a seasoning ingredient in Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian cooking.
How to Make It
Step 1: Prepare the Green Beans and Garlic
Wash the green beans and pat them completely dry with paper towels. Line up the ends of a handful of green beans. Trim off both ends then cut the beans in half again to create 3-inch segments. Repeat this process until all the green beans are trimmed and cut.
