You mean the onions were marinated? Perhaps pickled onions?

I don't think you'll be wasting food if you make small batches from the various recipes that you've found. It'll all be good, maybe not exactly like the restaurant's, but good nonetheless.

The beans customarily used in that type of dish are yard long beans, aka Chinese long beans or asparagus beans, which are a different genus from common beans. Common beans can be substituted but will taste a little different. Look for long beans at your Asian market. They are about 18" long and usually sold tied in a bundle. If you are a gardener, consider growing some.

There are many recipes. I can't access the one I use right now. I will post it later but I am quite sure it is not the one with onions.

Jim

Long beans really taste different from regular green beans??? Didn't know that?? My local Asian market has them all the time... just have never tried them... now I will!

Well, I made them and am munching on them as I type. Not bad, but not close. And I now remember why I stopped cooking green beans years ago- they're the one vegetable that I can never get quite right. I've tried roasting them and sauteeing them, as I did tonight- it seems that they are inconsistent (some perfect, some too soft, some could be cooked a little longer.) I don't know why this is, as I cut them all to the same size. I don't like them boiled, but I wonder if a quick blanch before sauteeing would help?

Posted by jimster " The beans customarily used in that type of dish are yard long beans, -----"

They should call them 2/3 Yard Long Beans. I have not seen them longer than 24 inches. :-)

It depends on if you like them soft or crunchy.

To make them soft, pressure cook them just 10 minutes, then stir fry.

dcarch

Definitely blanch them before sauteing.

Sometimes grocery store produce beans can be inconsistent. Try the frozen verts haricot beans, or as recommended, the Chinese long beans.

Here is a link that might be useful: verts haricot

This was an interesting thread to me as I love this dish but we always order it in restaurants instead of making it at home. So it wasn't until I Googled recipes today that I was amused (and somewhat appalled, I admit) by most of the recipes for this Chinese stir-fry standard.

I don't know if it will help if I describe this dish as we know it, in the San Francisco Bay Area, but here goes:

In Szechuan (now Sichuan) the technique for this dish is known as "dry cooked"; that is, no batter or sauce, but lots of oil is used - a full 1 cup for a l lb of beans. The beans are stir-fried until blistered and almost tender, then removed.

A very little amount of ground pork, I'd estimate 3-4 oz at most - is cooked with a tablespoon or so of dark soy (if you mixed 2 teasp soy with 1 tsp light molasses, that's an acceptable sub). Contrary to many recipes, there is no garlic or ginger or onion traditionally used in this recipe.

What IS used is the canned Szechwan vegetables, which are a salty pickled cabbage mix, chopped fine. They really should be lightly rinsed, but a lot of "old school" cooks don't do this; the idea being that dishes are salty so that a very little flavors the rice, and the food goes further and more cheaply.

The pork is tossed with the chopped canned veggies - you might be surprised how many Chinese restaurants use commercial products for a shortcut - and the beans are returned to the pan for a final heating and tossing with lots of red pepper flakes.

I would imagine the onion came about as a sub for these canned Chinese veggies, which aren't always easy to find even here.

Most of the photos on the web show large clumps of ground pork with very little green beans. Out here, the dish is 98% green beans, with only a very little, very fine crumbles of the mixed pork and veggies.

In Chinese cuisine they describe dishes and foods by well-defined 'tastes'. This dish is traditionally: spicy, oily, salty, and sour.

That's very interesting,jkom! I used a recipe that called for the "dry cook" method, but it did call for garlic and ginger. I had looked at quite a few recipes and none of them told me what you did, so thank you!