Recipe Idea: Spicy Green Beans
Having the most frugal grocery budget in the world isn’t going to help you any if you can’t put together at least a few healthy, tasty, and cheap eats! Every month, The Outlier Model features a cheap recipe idea, along with the cost breakdown.
Sometimes, it’s not the meat that needs to stand out, but the side. Think of many roast meats that you might make – roast chicken, pork chops or baked fish. In these cases, you would often season the meat sparingly with salt and pepper so that the flavours of the meat would come out during cooking. When I prepare a meat like this, I like to serve it with a strong side dish. One of my favourite side dishes to prepare in the winter is spicy green beans.
Photo credit: wonderyort via Flickr
Spicy Green Beans
1lb green beans ($2)
2 cloves garlic ($0.10)
1/3 cup water
2 tbsp soy sauce (< $0.10)
1 tsp sugar (< $0.10)
1 tbsp chili sauce (< $0.10)
splash of vinegar (< $0.10)
Put on a medium sized pot of water to boil. Meanwhile, clean and trim your green beans. When the water is ready, toss in the beans for 2-3 minutes to blanch. When it’s finished, strain the beans and rinse with ice water to stop the cooking process.
Prepare the sauce in a small bowl and mince the garlic. Heat oil on a large pan or wok until HOT. Then, toss in the garlic and fry for 2 minutes or until browned. Then toss in the green beans and fry for 6-8 minutes, adding the sauce gradually. Just before it’s done, add a splash of vinegar and toss the beans for another minute. Serve as a side with your favourite dishes! Goes great with white rice.
** You can adjust the amount of soy sauce and chili sauce to suit your taste.
Servings: 4
Cost per serving: $0.65
Frugal hack: If you can grow your own beans, then this recipe is practically free! Or if that’s not an option, you can always substitute a different vegetable to use what is currently in season.
Feeling adventurous? You can add different ingredients to the stir fry process and make it a meal on it’s own to serve with rice. Mushrooms, slices of carrot and baby corn go great when stir fried with green beans. Add tofu, sliced chicken or pork for protein.
We make something very similar as we love beans here. We also make a cold bean salad that is awesome in the summer or any time of year! Cheers
I’ve never made a bean salad. Do you blanch the beans first?
Those look yummy! I’m going to have to make them soon. I love green beans but my spouse is pretty indifferent. Spicy food usually goes over better
Give it a try! It’s super flavorful. When I make it for Brian, I thicken the sauce because he likes to slather it on.
Oh yum, I bet this dish would be tasty with broccoli we love broccoli and eat a ton in this household.
It would work well with broccoli I think. The great thing about most of these sauces is that they are so flexible.
My wife makes something like this in the summer with the beans from our garden…very tasty!
Nice! I’m going to have another go at growing beans this summer. I did not get a very good crop this past summer, But now we are in an condo with a lot more sun.
MMmm…I love anything that’s spicy! What is chili sauce by the way???
Its an Asian sauce that is usually sold in plastic jars. Its chili and garlic paste, to be exact. It’s a mix of chili’s, garlic, vinegar and other spices. Usually $3 for a medium sized jar.
Bookmarked! Gonna have to come back and try this one. I made homemade black bean burgers last night, delicious! I basically had everything already at home except the black beans (kinda like this recipe except green beans), it cost me barely anything. I like the idea of the chili sauce. In the past year or so I have become a huge fan of cumin too.
Nice! Do you have a recipe up for the black bean burgers? I’ve made chickpea burgers myself but not black bean.