A simple and easy-to-make Chinese stir-fried long beans with minced pork and Chinese olive vegetables. Flavorful, quick, and goes great mixed with rice for a quick meal.

Table of Contents
Chinese long beans (which are also known as yard long beans, snake beans, and asparagus beans) are delicious, especially when stir-fried with minced pork and seasoned with preserved olive vegetables. It's a classic recipe, easy to put together, and can be made as a quick meal when eaten with white rice.
What really makes this recipe extra delicious is the umami flavor which is naturally added in by using preserved olive vegetables to dry fry the yardlong beans. Did I mention they are quick to make as well?
If you have extra leftover Chinese yard beans, you can also try my Thai Basil Chicken (Pad Krapow Gai) recipe, which uses diced or ground chicken, yardlong beans, Thai basil and fish sauce.
What Does Dry-Fried Mean?
Dry fried is just a fancy way of saying stir fry in a pan with REALLY hot oil on high heat. The method is similar to deep-frying without excessive oil. Since the wok is really hot, it cooks the food really fast.
When you are dry frying, you need to remember to work fast and always keep the food moving so that it doesn't burn. You also always want to work with small bite-sized pieces as well.
I like to start off my dry frying by browning some ginger and garlic to flavor the hot oil before adding in the veggies or meat.
Are Long Beans the Same as Green Beans?
The main difference between long beans and green beans is the texture and the length of the bean. Long beans can grow upwards to 2 feet long, whereas green beans stay around 3-4 inches.
Green beans are also a lot more tender, crispier, and have a crunch to them, especially when eaten raw, whereas long beans have a tougher exterior and are chewier when eaten raw.
When cooked, long beans have a slightly sweeter flavor than green beans, which have a more green flavor.
That being said, for this recipe, you can still substitute long beans with green beans if you are having a hard time finding them.
Ingredients
- Chinese Yardlong Beans - Although yardlong beans have a different texture than green beans, you can still easily substitute them with green beans if you cannot find them at the Asian grocers.
- Chinese Cooking Wine - You can use both Chinese cooking rice wine and Shaoxing wine for this recipe, which you can get from an Asian grocery store or online. If you cannot find it, you can substitute it with dry sherry.
- White Pepper - If you cannot find white pepper, omit it from the recipe. Do not substitute it with black pepper. Black pepper is much stronger in flavor and will overpower this dish.
- Chinese Olive Vegetables - this is an umami-packed condiment made from olives, mustard vegetables, oils, and salt. It tastes very different than the typical olives and is usually found in any Asian grocery store by the pickled ingredients.
How to Cook Chinese Long Beans
Preparation
- If you are using Chinese yardlong beans for this recipe, you will have to cut them up into smaller pieces so that they are easier to cook and eat.
Cut off the tips and discard them, chop the rest of the beans up into 2-inch-length pieces.
- Marinate the ground pork and set it aside.
- Finely mince the garlic and ginger and set it aside
- In a wok, set your stove to high heat and add about 3 tablespoons of oil and wait for it to get really hot.
Cooking Everything Together
- Add in the ginger first to brown it, once it gets golden brown, add in the garlic and brown for a few seconds.
- Add in your ground pork and stir fry it. Use your spatula to break up the pork into small pieces. You want to cook it until it is brown, so if water starts to come out of the pork, continue to cook it until all the water evaporates. Add in the dark soy at the end and mix it into the pork
- Remove the pork onto a clean plate and reheat the wok again with some oil
- Add the yardlong beans and stir fry them until they are blistered.
- Add in soy sauce and the cooked minced pork and olive vegetables and stir fry it for a few minutes
- Serve with some white rice and enjoy!
FAQs
I have tried parboiling and cooking them directly in the pan and there wasn't a big difference, so I do not parboil beans whenever I stir fry them to save some time and to keep the greens crisper.
Some Recipes You May Like
- Roasted Okra
- Sweet Ginger Soy Fried Cabbage
- Honey Glazed Pan-Fried Brussels Sprout
- Charred Lemon Garlic Edamame
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Recipe Card
Dry-Fried Long Beans and Minced Pork with Olive Vegetables
Joyce's Recipe Notes
- You can substitute green beans for yardlong beans
Ingredients
- 1 bundle yardlong beans (Chinese long beans)
Ground Pork Marinade
- 1 lb ground pork
- ½ tablespoon white pepper
- 1 tablespoon Chinese rice cooking wine
- 1 ½ tablespoons soy sauce
Sauce Ingredients
- 1 ½ tablespoons Chinese olive vegetable
- 1 tablespoons soy sauce
- ½ tablespoon dark soy sauce
- 2 cloves garlic (finely minced)
- 3 slices ginger
Instructions
Preparation
- In a medium bowl, marinate the ground pork with 1½ tablespoons of soy sauce, white pepper, cooking wine and mix well and set aside.
- Wash the beans under cold water and cut off the ends and discard them.Chop the beans up into bite-sized pieces, I like to cut them into 1-2 inch length pieces.
- Finely mince the garlic and slice the ginger and set it aside.
Cooking the Chinese yardlong beans
- In a wok or frying pan, set the stove to high heat and add about 3 tablespoons of oil
- Once the oil is hot, add in the ginger and toast it until it has turned golden. (approximately 1-2 minutes)
- Add in the garlic and brown for 30 seconds
- Add in the ground pork and break it apart while cooking it. Cook it until it is fully cooked and brown (approximately 10-15 minutes) If water comes out of the pork, keep cooking it until all the water has evaporated and the pork has a chance to brown.
- When the pork is done, stir in the dark soy sauce remove the pork from the wok onto a clean plate and set it aside for later. You can also remove the ginger slices as well and discard them.
- Re-heat the wok or frying pan to high heat with 1-2 tablespoons of oil.
- Once the oil is hot, add in the beans (be careful if your beans are wet they may splatter)
- Spread out the beans so they get as much surface area to touch the pan as possible so that they can blister more quickly. Cook for approximately 5 minutes until they are blistered and soft.
- Add in 1 tablespoon of soy sauce and continue to stir fry for 20 seconds
- Add back in the cooked pork and add the olive vegetables as well. Stir fry for a few more minutes and plate it.
- Serve hot with a side of rice or noodles
Nutrition
*Nutritional information is calculated using online tools and is an estimate*
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Thomas says
What a wonderful recipe! A great way to be introduced to your recipes! Thank you
Joyce Lee says
Hi Thomas!
Thank you for the wonderful kind words 😊 I am very happy you enjoyed this! I'm always happy to share.
Josie says
This deep-fried long beans and minced pork in olive vegetable is an overwhelming dish. I usually go to authentic Chinese restaurant to order this because of wok-flame that I like it most. Now, I can cook at home with your special ingredients.
Joyce, I will provide you my feedback, after I cook for my family. 😊❤
Joyce Lee says
Hi Josie!
I hope everyone liked it!
Meredith says
Hi Joyce, I was indeed wondering what to do with the rest of the olive vegetable. Thanks for the tip about fried rice. I wonder if your yummy recipe would work as well for string beans. I'm glad you didn't mind my mentioning the typo!
Joyce says
Hi Meredith,
Yes this definitely works well with string beans as well! I have also used snow peas as well and that worked just as well! 🙂
If you like fried noodles, the olive vegetable also works great in that as well, it's not just limited to fried rice. 😀
Meredith says
I finally got all the ingredients together so I could make this recipe for Dry-Fried Long Beans and Minced Pork with Olive Vegetable. My garden produced a bumper crop of long beans this year and I'm glad I now have a tasty way to prepare them. (There is a confusing typo in the recipe. It says "finely mince the ginger" where it should say "finely mince the garlic.") The amount of soy sauce seemed a lot but it balanced very well. Thank you, Joyce!
Joyce says
Hi Meredith!
I have never tried growing long beans! You have inspired me to try to grow them next year! 🙂 Thank you so much for pointing out this typo! I have re-read the recipe card and have also re-arranged the ingredients list so that it is easier to read in the future (I broke up the marinade ingredients with the sauce ingredients). I really appreciate when these typos are pointed out to me, especially since I noticed lately I have been making most of my edits late at night and going cross eyed reading through them. heehee 🙂
I am happy you enjoyed this dish! 🙂
OH and the Olive vegetable is spectacular on fried rice 🙂 So if you don't know what to do with it, definitely try putting a tablespoon into fried rice! 🙂
Heather (delicious not gorgeous) says
this with an obscene amount of rice on the side sounds perfect! also yes, all those languishing summer projects sigh. i was going to try to compile a family e-cookbook (we have one but it's old and on paper).... and that still hasn't gotten started. whoops.
Joyce says
Isn't it funny how rice goes hand and hand with this? haha! OMG those old family passed on recipes are awesome, if you ever make a ebook for it I'd be SO excited! 🙂
romain | glebekitchen.com says
Off to the store I go to find Chinese olive vegetables! This looks sooo good!
Joyce says
It's off-putting at first, but I promise you it' fantastic! 😀
Makos(@thehungrybites) says
Hey, Joyce! This is so appetizing! It'll probably be my next favorite meal!
Joyce says
Yay! 😀 Thanks Makos! 😀