Fall is a great season for comfort food, and potatoes are definitely comfort food. So what recipe could I do with potatoes that hadn’t been done before in the blogosphere?
There’s a famous Chinese dish called Twice Cooked Pork, or 回锅肉(hui guo rou) of Hunan origin, where pork belly is blanched, and then stir-fried with leeks, chili, and black bean. It’s an amazing dish, and I decided to do a vegan/vegetarian version. Rather than pork belly, potatoes are the star and are roasted in the oven and then stir-fried with a spicy black bean sauce in the wok and twice cooked potatoes were born.
Our roasted cauliflower stir-fry recipe from a few months ago was a hit with readers, but it actually did have meat in it.
This Spicy Black Bean Twice Cooked Potatoes dish is completely meatless, but there’s so much flavor…carnivores won’t miss it, and vegans will be happy for a new, unique dish to add to the rotation. My taste buds worked out the details with my brain, and this was what happened!
If you’re really in a mood for potatoes, another more traditional and classic dish to also check out is Sichuan Stir-Fried Potatoes
Recipe Instructions
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F, and spread the potatoes on a parchment-lined baking sheet.
Toss with salt to taste, white pepper, and five spice powder. Drizzle with olive oil and roast for about 30 minutes, or until fork tender.
Have the rest of your ingredients ready to go before you start cooking!
Once the potatoes are done roasting, heat a couple tablespoons of oil in a wok over medium low heat. Add the garlic, dried red chilies…
…and fermented black beans.
Cook for a couple minutes, and be careful not to burn the ingredients. Add the shaoxing or rice wine, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, sesame oil, and water.
Stir everything together and add the roasted potatoes and leeks.
Turn up the heat to high and stir-fry for another 2 minutes.
Serve immediately!
Spicy Black Bean Twice Cooked Potatoes
Ingredients
- 4-5 medium Yukon gold potatoes (scrubbed and cut into bite-sized chunks)
- salt
- 1/8 teaspoon white pepper
- 1/8 teaspoon five-spice powder
- oil
- 4 cloves garlic (smashed and coarsely chopped)
- 1-6 dried red chilies (chopped and de-seeded; depending on your tolerance for heat)
- 2 tablespoons black beans
- 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
- 1 teaspoon light soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
- ½ teaspoon sesame oil
- 2 tablespoons water
- 1 cup leeks (sliced on the diagonal into thin strips)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F, and spread the potatoes on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Toss with salt to taste, white pepper, and five-spice powder. Drizzle with olive oil and roast for about 30 minutes, or until fork tender.
- Once the potatoes are done roasting, heat a couple tablespoons of oil in a wok over medium low heat. Add the garlic, chili, and black beans. Cook for a couple minutes, and be careful not to burn the ingredients.
- Add the wine, soy sauces, sesame oil, and water. Stir everything together and add the roasted potatoes and leeks. Turn up the heat to high and stir-fry for another 2 minutes. Serve immediately.
Great recipe idea but lacking some balance. Love the whole idea of this dish but I would recommend adding a bit more seasoning to it. Added probably around 1 teaspoon of sugar or so, a splash of vinegar and some oyster sauce. Feel like it would also benefit from some ginger added to it. Cheers!
Thank you so much for the feedback :-)
Between the association my brain has for 5-spice as a meat flavoring, and the umami of the beans, these were some meaty potatoes. I made the mistake of letting my roast taters sit in the fridge so I could sauce them up the next day, and I ended up losing out on some crunch, but since the flavor was great, it’s not a huge regret. Might even try with fried potatoes :9
Great recipe! WWWAAAAAYYYYY too many photos on this page. Seven of them are identical. Please limit your photos to ONE of the dish and any other important instructional shots. The planet is groaning under our influence, and there are hundreds and thousands of acres of buildings housing web server technology. Please help us minimize that. Thanks.
You are so right, Scott. We will do better. Thank you for letting us know :-)
I haven’t made it yet. In your picture of the ingredients all assembled and ready to go, the black beans are in a strainer, but I can’t find reference to that in the recipe. Do you wash/rinse the fermented black beans? (This maybe something that everyone else just knows, but….) Thanks for all the great recipes!
My father learned of a dish very similar from his father the major difference is he used Bacon in it and served it with steamed rice I still make that dish today.
I am sure the bacon will add a lot of umami to this dish :-)