Now Cooking: String Beans

Is that one of my most boring titles ever? I think it might be. A post on string beans?! Yes.


I was at Daiei- oops, I meant to say Don Quixote the other day with Dad. While he picked up some treats for the doggie, I picked up some mushrooms. Next to the mushrooms were string beans. *Shrugged shoulders* why not? So I picked up a bag.

I’ve been looking to add more good stuff to my diet and my cooking “endeavors.” I thought of the string beans because I liked the Spring Bean Tempura from Genki Sushi.

Q1: Are “string beans” and “spring beans” the same thing?

Anyways, umm…. I don’t make sushi.

Neither do I know what to do with string beans.

But so what?

I looked up string bean recipes on the internet. I tend to think that searching recipes online is scary. What if I don’t have all the other ingredients? Should I go out and get the specified ingredients so that I can follow the recipe exactly? What if I don’t have the right cooking pots/ pans/ utensils? What if there’s a term or technique I don’t understand?

I don’t balk easily in the face of fear. Well, at least not when it comes to food.

On the first search page, I found a “Fail Proof String Bean Recipe.” As I read it, I felt more relieved. I didn’t have all the ingredients. I don’t care for diced tomatoes, for which the recipe specifies.

Yet many of the ingredients were the same as the spinach mushroom salad I already make quite frequently and it sounded easy to cook the beans.

I prepped the mushrooms and beans, then sautéed them together with garlic and a little bit of butter. Next came a little olive oil and tossing in the spinach. Once the spinach cooked down, it was ready [if you’d like more detailed steps, let me know- got it from a health show].

The s.b. recipe called for a squeeze of lime. I have no lime. I do have lemon juice that works well in the healthy fried chicken that I make so I splashed just a little over the spinach and stirred it in.



Verdict: the string beans were a great addition to the salad. They added a little complimenting flavor as well as provided something to pierce my fork into and pick up more salad with each bite- the mushrooms alone don’t really do the job for getting cooked spinach on the fork.

The lemon juice- skip it. Maybe it does need to be a lime. Or maybe it’s supposed to compliment the cooked wine that I didn’t use this time.

Here are the pics. Bon appétit.








Thank you for reading.