Umami Cooking

Meaty with a dash of veggies

Green beans with sesame dressing

Toasted sesame seeds are ground and mixed with rice vinegar, dashi, mirin, soy sauce and sugar to make the dressing. Briefly boiled green beans and thinly sliced red onion are tossed in to complete this lovely side dish.

Green beans with sesame dressing

Vegetable / fruit recipe

Cook’s notes

The green beans are boiled? Yes, boiled. While sauteeing or stir frying vegetables may seem like the easiest and fastest ways to make a delicious side dish, there are times when boiling vegetables can be just as quick and the result can be just as wonderful.
For the sesame dressing, we use a suribachi (traditional Japanese mortar and pestle) to grind toasted sesame seeds. If you don’t own one, you may use a regular mortar and pestle but the process of turning toasted sesame seeds into a coarse paste may take longer.
Will a mini processor work? Well, it will grind the seeds but unless you can pour liquid ingredients into the processor, you will need to scrape the paste into a bowl to stir in the liquid ingredients. So much flavor (think of the oil from the sesame seeds) will get lost in the transfer.
In the end, it is your decision what to use to grind the sesame seeds. If you go with a food processor, you might want to add a drizzle of sesame seed oil into the dressing to make up for whatever flavor is lost along the way.

Green beans with sesame dressing

Prep: 10 minutes
Cook: 8 minutes
Total: 18 minutes
Servings: 3 people
Course: Side Dish
Cuisine: Japanese
Label: Green beans, Vegetable salad
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Ingredients

  • 250 grams green beans (8.8 oz)
  • 1 red onion

Sesame dressing

  • ¼ cup toasted sesame seeds
  • 3 tablespoons rice vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons dashi
  • 1 tablespoon mirin
  • 1 tablespoon Japanese soy sauce
  • 1½ teaspoons sugar

Instructions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. String the green beans and cut into two-inch lengths.
  2. Boil water in a pot, add the green beans and cook just until the color deepens.
    Boiling green beans then plunging in iced water
  3. Scoop out the green beans and dump into a bowl of iced water. Leave to cool.
  4. Peel the onion, cut into halves and thinly slice.

Make the sesame dressing

  1. Place the toasted sesame seeds in a suribachi and grind to a coarse paste.
    Grinding toasted sesame seeds in suribachi
  2. Pour in the rice vinegar, dashi, mirin and soy sauce.
    Adding dashi, vinegar, mirin, soy sauce and sugar to ground sesame seeds
  3. Stir in the sugar and mix until dissolved.

Toss in the vegetables

  1. Drain the green beans well and add to the dressing.
    Tossing green beans in sesame dressing before adding sliced onion
  2. Add the sliced onion to the beans and dressing.
  3. Toss to coat the beans and onion slices with the sesame dressing.
    Tossing green beans and sliced red onion with sesame dressing
  4. Transfer the contents of the suribachi to a shallow bowl and serve.
    Green beans with sesame dressing
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Meaty with a dash of veggies