Szechuan Pork Stir-Fry with green beans and carrots / quinoa
This spicy Szechuan stir-fry that was first featured in 2018 is quick and easy but packed with flavor. Feel free to adjust the spice to your preference, or leave the spice out completely - the sauce has plenty of flavor even without it.
Ingredients
- Ginger - 2 tsp, grated
- Garlic - 2 cloves, chopped
- Stock, any low-sodium variety - 1/2 cup (sub water)
- Tamari - 1/4 cup
- Cornstarch - 1 Tbsp
- Brown sugar - 1 Tbsp
- Vinegar, rice - 2 Tbsp
- Oil, toasted sesame - 2 Tbsp
- Chili garlic sauce - 1 tsp, more to taste (sub any hot sauce)
- Green beans - 1 lb, sliced into 1” / 2.5 cm
- Carrots - 12 oz, thinly sliced
- Cilantro - 2 tsp , leaves chopped
- Oil, cooking - 1 Tbsp + 1 Tbsp
- Stock, any low-sodium variety - 3 Tbsp (sub water)
- Pork, ground - 1 lb
- Lime juice - 2 tsp
- Quinoa, uncooked - 2/3 cup
- Stock, any type - 1 1/3 cup
Nutrition Facts
Prep
- Quinoa - (Skip if quinoa was made ahead for Monday.) Combine quinoa with stock in a saucepan. Add some salt. Bring to a boil covered. Lower heat, keep covered, and cook until liquid is absorbed, 8 to 10 minutes. (Can be done up to 5 days ahead)
- Ginger / Garlic / Green beans / Carrots - Prep as directed. Combine ginger and garlic. Combine green beans and carrots in another container. (Can be done up to 5 days ahead)
- Cilantro - Chop cilantro.
- Make sauce - Combine ginger, garlic, stock (portion for sauce), Tamari, cornstarch, brown sugar, vinegar, toasted sesame oil, and chili garlic sauce. (Can be done up to 5 days ahead)
Make
- Heat a large wok over medium-high heat. Add first part of cooking oil and then green beans and carrots with a pinch of salt. Saute until vegetables are bright and starting to brown in spots, 3 to 4 minutes. Add stock (portion for stir-fry) and cover pan with a lid or foil. Simmer vegetables until nearly tender, ~2 minutes. Remove cover and continue to saute until liquid is cooked off. Season with some salt or add some chili garlic sauce (not in ingredients list for stir-fry) if you’d like it to have a bit of spice.
- Set vegetables aside and return wok to medium-high heat.
- Add second part of cooking oil and then pork. Saute, breaking pork apart, until cooked through, ~5 minutes. Drain any excess grease off the pork.
- Add sauce to pork and simmer until sauce thickens slightly and coats pork, ~1 minute more. Add vegetable back in and stir to combine with sauce.
- If quinoa was made ahead, reheat in the microwave.
- Serve pork and vegetables over quinoa. Top with cilantro and lime juice. Enjoy!
Reviews
This meal has 44 reviews
took a little while, but it was delicious and worth it!
Maybe it was not using enough sesame oil (I ran out) or the pork was starting to go bad, but the flavor seemed a bit off. Added sesame seeds to make up for the lack of sesame.
So good! Easy to make after a bit of practice. We actually subbed shrimp and loved it. I used frozen wonton wrappers (leftover from last time), but they were harder to work with. Next time I'll just double the recipe and freeze the potstickers.
These were frustrating to make (they stuck to the pan.. to be fair, my stove is.. aggressive) but they were very tasty regardless. I had to remake the sauce after burning the first one - it seemed to never thicken so I waited and waited. Cooked it way too long - a brief simmer will do.
Delicious!
The potstickers were good, though I couldn't find ground pork in my grocery store so I went with ground beef. The flavors weren't quite right, so I suspect it was the beef and not the recipe. The green beans were dull, but the dipping sauce was delicious.