Most of us have ‘go to’ recipes… something quick and delicious that you can make on an instance without even thinking.
This one is so crazy simple, you can literally make it in minutes. Makes a great side dish, cold you can jazz up any salad throwing some of these green beans in too!
And today, I mixed it up a little substituting one ingredient – super yum!
Interested?
Everyday French Beans
Here goes:
- Green beans, sliced roughly in 3 inch bits – can parboil first but not required
Then in a non-stick pan
- Heat a dollop of oil on high
- Drop in 1/2 teaspoon each of cumin seeds, yellow or brown mustard seeds and sesame or sunflower seeds
- They should start to pop and sizzle almost immediately
- Thrown in the green beans
- Then a dash of salt and cayenne pepper
- Just keep tossing around for a few minutes until everything gets nice and toasty – it is best when the green beans get a bit ‘singed’ to bring out a roasted flavour
Today I substituted sunflower for sesame seeds – wow! Will definitely do a repeat of that… maybe experiment with other seeds too…
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Everyday Asia 
One of my favourites too. And the great thing about this is that it is pretty international: there are versions all over Asia and Europe. And you also find it in Canada, I guess.
Green beans are quite versatile and cook quickly too so easy to make simple fast ‘accompaniment’ type dishes. 🙂
This looks excellent and super easy, thank you.
Yup! Easy peasy. 🙂
I’ll try this! My go to beans are: fry a bunch of garlic, fry the beans, then add salt and lemon juice.
Oh!! I like your approach too! Must try it soon. 🙂
Could you give a reccomendation for the mustard seed? We both quite dislike that taste 😦 Would leaving it out lose a big part of the fun?
Completely up to you! Just don’t miss the cumin seeds! Why not then try cumin, sesame and sunflower and drop the mustard seed. See how it turns out? The trick here is to get a bit of smokiness going to make it really yum. 🙂
Okay, I’ll make them. You convinced me.
Hahaha! Gee… It’s like I’m standing over you with a stern expression intoning “YOU MUST MAKE BEANS!!” 😉
These are definitely one of my favourite dishes. When I lived in Beijing I used to visit this little restaurant and order them along with a fabulous eggplant dish. Delicious!!
I have a feeling this style of beans could be found in variations in China, India and more! 🙂
Adding Garlic and some slivered almonds also is a fun twist.
That was my mothers ‘go to’ Canadian version – also yum!
Alas I don’t keep slivered almonds on hand here and find the way I like stick to the dry spice/seeds.