Shrimp and String Beans, Chicken and broccoli , Singapore Mei Fun, Beef chow fun, Mapo Tofu, Eggplant with Garlic sauce and Chicken Wings are some of our favorite go to times from the Chinese Take-out menu. Stay tuned, as I will also be sharing recipes for all of these throughout the year.
Below is my Shrimp and String-beans Recipe! You can use the same recipe for any kind of meat or non meat choice you prefer . Broccoli, snow peas and eggplant is excellent with this as well. As usual, make it your own and use what you’ve got on hand😉.
Creating a dish is an oh so beautiful thing! It is a reflection of the person cooking it and where they are in their life and/or cooking journey. Every time you make it, you can either chose to make it the same, find ways to tweak it or change it up to your liking or whoever you are cooking it for.
In your earlier cooking stages, you make chose to use precooked frozen shrimp with frozen string beans; once you’re comfortable with cooking frozen shrimp and string beans; you may muster up courage to blanch your own shrimp and string beans and chose a premade store bought sauce. Finally, you may chose to make it from scratch like my recipe below! I used to use cornstarch at the end of a recipe to thicken a sauce. After having made so many dishes with cornstarch or flour coated food so many times now, I noticed that if you pan fry the protein, I seldom have to add cornstarch at the end because the sauce thickens itself with the residual cornstarch from the coating on your protein.
The Picture Walk of the Recipe
Ingredients
5-8 clove garlic minced
4 stalks of scallion chopped
30 pcs of shrimp (more or less)
1/4 cup cornstarch ( enough to just coat the shrimps before frying)
2 cups of String beans (more or less)
5 -7tbsp soy sauce
5-7 tbsp stock (I used beef this time)
1-1.5 tbsp sugar
Steps
1-Pour cornstarch into a bowl using your measuring cup and coat the shrimp evenly.
2- Pour oil (2-4tbsp) into a wok or large pan and pan fry all shrimps on medium to medium low heat until they’re cooked (about 2-3 minutes each side) and set aside for later. I put it back in the measuring cup used to measure the cornstarch earlier (one less dish to wash).
3-Pour in (2-3tbsp) oil and cook your string beans. Put the cover on for between 3-5 minutes to steam it (cook longer if you want it softer for kids) and set aside.
*Note:
You can chose to blanch your beans in boiling water for a few minutes to make it healthier (less oil) and it’ll come out just as tasty. The star of the dish is pan- frying the cornstarch coated shrimp because of the little crispy parts that get stuck on the bottom of the pan, making it a great base for the sauce. Your kitchen will smell amazing too. This is also how I make my salt and pepper shrimp and fish as well. Recipe to follow later.
4-To make the sauce, heat up another 2 tbsp oil and add in garlic and scallion. Mix until fragrant for about 1 minutes and add the soy sauce and stock.
*Note:
I did 5 tbsp of both soy sauce and stock because I didn’t want too much sauce and I’m trying to cut down on salt. You can add more stock and soy sauce if you want (I try to make it equal parts of soy sauce and stock to make it easier to remember). My recipe is just enough to coat the shrimp and string beans perfectly, but not enough to put sauce over rice.
5- Add the shrimp back in and mix well for about 3 minutes and add in string beans and cook for another 3-5 minutes or until sauce thickens.
6- Serve over white rice!
I hope you get to try out this recipe and let me know your thoughts on this. I would love to hear your attempt at this recipe. up bits stuck on the bottom of the pan. Share in the comments below, how did yours come out?