These Chinese style, dry fried garlic green beans are blistered until perfectly wrinkled & sautéed with lots of garlic. Inspired by Din Tai Fung green beans. The perfect Asian side dish!
Many times I've gone to restaurants and ordered these Chinese style, dry fried garlic green beans. They're blistered until perfectly wrinkled, bright green with a crunchy texture, and loaded with garlic flavor. Such a simple dish but lots of flavor. I had to figure out how to make these and finally figured it out after a few tries! I modeled these after Din Tai Fung green beans so kept the flavors and seasoning similar to the restaurant version.
This is a four ingredient recipe that's ready in under 15 minutes. It's super versatile as you can add spices and other seasonings to change up the flavor.
There are many other varieties of Chinese style garlic green beans but I kept it simple with just garlic and salt. Feel free to add some spicy Szechuan chili oil to spice things up.
Try out this Din Tai Fung Inspired Crunchy Asian Cucumber Salad:
Or check out these Din Tai Fung Stir Fried Shanghai Rice Cakes:
Tips for Chinese Style, Dry Fried Garlic Green Beans
Start by trimming the ends of your green beans and cut them in half. You have the option to blanch the green beans before you start dry frying them or you can leave them raw and add them directly to the hot oil. See more on this below.
What is Blanching?
- Blanching is adding vegetables to boiling water for a brief amount of time and then immediately putting them in an ice water bath to stop the cooking process. What you end up with is brightly colored vegetables that are tender but still crisp.
To Blanch or Not To Blanch the Green Beans:
The following is a comparison of dry fried green beans with blanched and unblanched green beans. (Yes, I may have gone a bit overboard when recipe testing.)
You can see the blanched green beans are a nice bright green color compared to the blanched green beans. They are also just slightly more tender than the raw counterpart.
When dry frying both the blanched and unblanched green beans, they both blister and wrinkle, and they are both bright green. But there's a subtle difference to their surface texture as you can see below:
Din Tai Fung Green Beans
If you're going for Din Tai Fung green beans, I recommend blanching the green beans as you'll get that characteristic wrinkled, blistered look to the green beans.
Below, on the left is the blanched dry fried green bean. On the right is the unblanced (raw) dry fried green bean. They're are both similar in color but the wrinkles/blisters are slightly different.
- The blanched green bean produces smaller, more uniform blisters. Most similar to Din Tai Fung green beans.
- The unblanched green beans produces larger, more variable blisters.
It's entire up to you if it's worth the extra step but in the end, the flavor and crunchiness of the green beans were practically undistinguishable.
Dry Fried Garlic Green Beans
What is Dry Frying?
Dry frying is frying your vegetable or protein in oil without any batter, resulting in drying the surface of your food. You want to make sure there's enough oil in your pan to submerge your food and to use an oil with a high smoke point. I used avocado oil and it works great.
You can see the texture of the green beans are wrinkled and blistered from dry frying. But they are still crunchy.
Next you want to briefly saute the green beans with a lot of garlic.
Be sure not to over saute your green beans with the garlic otherwise, you'll lose the crunchy texture. Finish with salt to taste and you're done!
This recipe was inspired by Din Tai Fung green beans so the seasoning is very similar to that -- just salt and garlic. If you want to add more seasoning and spices, you can add them when sauteing the garlic.
These Chinese style garlic green beans is all about the wrinkled skin and crunchy texture. They should be crispy and crunchy with perfectly blistered skin. They also make the perfect Asian side dish! Serve with a these Din Tai Fung Crunchy Asian Cucumber Salad.
I hope you make these Chinese style, dry fried garlic green beans! Please share, rate, and comment below. I’d love to hear from you!
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Recipe
Chinese Style Dry Fried Garlic Green Beans
☑ Ingredients
- 3 cups green beans - ends trimmed and cut in half
- 5 cloves garlic - minced
- 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil - use a high smoke point oil, like avocado oil (plus more for deep frying)
- salt to taste - (I used ½ teaspoon)
- 1 Tablespoon Lao Gan Ma Spicy Chili Crisp - optional for spice - this is a spicy Szechuan chili oil
Instructions
- Optional: Blanch the green beans in boiling water for about 20 seconds until they turn bright green. Shock them in an ice water bath to cool them down and stop the cooking process. Remove from the ice water and then pat them dry. This gives you smaller, more uniform blisters on the green beans most similar to Din Tai Fung green beans, but otherwise this does not affect the taste. (See the comparison photos above in the blog post for more details.)
- Heat a deep pan or wok over high heat and add enough oil to deep fry the green beans. Test the temperature of the oil by dropping in a green bean. It should start to bubble and fry immediately otherwise the oil isn't hot enough. Fry your green beans just until you see blistering and wrinkling on the skin, about 30 seconds to 1 minute. Lay them on a rack or plate lined with paper towels.
- Add the oil to a hot pan and saute the garlic until it becomes fragrant. Optional: add the chili oil at this time if you'd like to add spice. Next, add the fried green beans and saute together for 30 seconds. Turn off the heat and serve immediately.
✎ Recipe Notes
Nutrition
*Nutritional information is an estimate, calculated using online tools.
Amy
I have been looking for some new and interesting side dishes to try - and this one was awesome. I loved how easy it is to prepare, and although simple - it does not lack in flavour. We will be making this on repeat. Even my kids enjoyed it, and I will take them eating greens as a win any day!
Jamie
Thanks Amy! So happy you and your kids loved this!
Jamie
These were deeeelicious! I thought it was odd that there was no salt in the directions so I didn’t add any and then of course read the ingredient list again and saw it there 🤦🏼♀️ Definitely necessary!
Made em’ with some baby back ribs. Perfect dinner 🙂
Chris Collins
What an easy and delicious side dish! Loving the detailed instructions too!
Aimee Mars
This recipe is fascinating! I sounds absolutely delicious and I've actually never heard of dry-fried garlic green beans, but feel like I need to make them right now. I love all your picture diagrams too. So helpful!
Lisa Huff
Loving all that garlic in there! Can't wait to give it a try. My kids love Chinese style green beans at every restaurant we go to.
Bintu | Recipes From A Pantry
Definitely going to be trying these! They look like such a tasty side dish!
Jessica Formicola
I made these green beans for dinner last night an d they were amazing! Thanks so much for sharing the recipe!
Kayla Knight
You should try adding a couple teaspoons of sugar too. Sweet and spicy green beans are the best!
Alexandra @ It's Not Complicated Recipes
This is such a delicious recipe, packed full of wonderful flavour!
Jamie
Thank you so much Alex! I'm so happy you liked it! 😀
Danielle Wolter
These sound incredible! I love dry frying green beans - it gives them such a great texture. What an awesome recipe!
Jamie
Thanks Danielle! So glad you like the recipe!
Beth Pierce
This was such an easy and flavorful side dish with dinner last night! Even my picky eaters gobbled these up!
Jamie
So glad to hear everyone loved it! Thank you Beth!
Krissy Allori
I love to order these. Now I look forward to making them.
Jamie
Thanks Krissy! I love ordering these too but now can have them at home!
Elaine
Easy and simple - just the way a side dish should be! Can't wait to try them with one of my favorite mains this weekend. Really like the way you sautéed them!
Jamie
Thanks Elaine! They make the perfect side to any main!
Yan
I love dry fried green beans. Was wondering if I can replace frying with oil with airfrying them instead? Thanks for sharing the recipe!
Jamie
Hi Yan! I haven't tried making this in an air fryer so can't say for sure but I don't see why you couldn't. I'd love to hear how it turns out if you give it a try!