Bean Sprouts Stir Fry

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Easy and super tasty bean sprouts stir fry with garlic and green onions. We season this dish with soy sauce and sesame oil. Finish with white pepper, if you'd like. It's flavorful and juicy with a bit of crunch. Feels healthy and satisfying. Serve hot. Eat with rice and enjoy!

A plate of bean sprouts stir fry, ready to eat. — *Bean Sprouts Stir Fry, ready to eat ^_^*

Why This Recipe Works

I always pick up a package of bean sprouts when we’re at the market.

They always come in handy, whether for adding into a bowl of noodle soup, making beef chow fun in the style of Lam’s Kitchen, or for Korean bean sprouts (a delicious side dish!), or rolling popiah (Chaozhou fresh spring rolls) at home.

And when I’m really in the mood, I pick up two bags of bean sprouts. Two? Yes! Specifically so that I can make bean sprout stir fry.

This is a super easy dish to make. All you need are the bean sprouts, plus garlic and green onions to flavor the dish. We season it with just a little soy sauce and sesame oil. And that’s it!

It's so tasty! Hot and crunchy but also a little "juicy." The garlic and green onions round it out and soy sauce and sesame oil is classic pairing that appears in SO many of the recipes on this blog.

You can also add white pepper. I like the extra dimension that white pepper gives to the dish. I recommend adding it if you have, but you should still try this dish even if you don’t have white pepper.

Make sure to serve the bean sprouts with a bowl of rice, it's the perfect pairing. We usually enjoy the bean sprouts as a side dish, though it can work alone as a simple vegetarian meal.

Ingredients

Here's what you'll need:

Bean sprouts - Make sure to get bean sprouts and not mung bean sprouts. They are often placed right next to each other at the markets and have similar packaging.
Garlic - Feel free to double or even triple the amount of garlic if that’s what you’re craving. Sometimes we make it really garlicky.
Green onion - Just chop the whole stalk (about ¼” pieces)
Soy sauce - We usually use the Kikkoman or Aloha (slightly less salty) brand soy sauce.
Sesame oil - We use this Kadoya brand that you can find at most markets (when in Hawaii, you can also get it at the local drugstore and Costco).
White pepper - Optional, but definitely worth adding. I love white pepper with this dish!

Step by Step Directions

Let's get cooking!

Clean the beansprouts
Clean the beansprouts by rinsing with water and removing the stringy end pieces. Dry and set aside.

Note from a local: Cleaning the beansprouts is not hard but it is tedious. It is a good task to assign friends, kids, or parents when they’re watching television heheh. Just set a big bowl of bean sprouts in front of them and kindly ask them to pull off the stringy end pieces. The reward for all this work? A really tasty dish!

Saute garlic and green onion.
In a pan over medium-high heat, saute the garlic for 2-3 minutes until lightly golden. Add the chopped green onions and saute for another 1 minute.

Protip: If you don’t have green onions, you can increase the garlic and skip the green onions. But try to use both if you can. The green onions give another layer of flavor to the dish.

Saute bean sprouts.
Add the bean sprouts and saute for 2-3 minutes, until the bean sprouts are cooked but still crisp! You don’t want to cook too long or they’ll get soggy. Just a few minutes is good enough.

Season.
Season with the soy sauce and sesame oil. Stir to mix. Add the white pepper (optional).

Serve!
Slide onto a plate and serve right away. Eat and enjoy it with rice.

FAQs and Tips

How long can this dish keep?

This dish is best served immediately. Leftovers are ok, but won’t be nearly as good. You can keep leftovers for 2-3 days in the refrigerator, reheat it in the microwave.

Since it is very quick dish to make (assuming you’ve already cleaned the bean sprouts), I would just cook exactly how much you plan to eat.

What other dishes to pair with Bean Sprouts Stir Fry?

First you need a big bowl of rice. That is the foundation of your meal. Then serve the bean sprouts alongside one or two other "main" dishes. Here's a few we like to pair:
- Furikake Salmon
- Pan Fried Tofu (With Garlic Soy Sauce)
- Seared Duck Breast
- Ants Climbing A Tree Noodles (aka Ma Yi Shang Shu)
- Mochiko Chicken
- Shoyu Hot Dogs
- Rafute (Okinawan Shoyu Pork)
- Yang Chow Fried Rice
- Chicken Hekka (like Japanese sukiyaki, but local-style)
- Chinese Sausage (Lap Cheong) and Green Beans

How dry do the beansprouts have to be before cooking?

In the dream world, the bean sprouts are complete dry before you cook. This is so that you can get a little bit of char/golden brown on them. But in everyday life, I don't have the time or patience to dry every bean sprout.

I put them in a colander and shake, shake, getting it as dry as I can but I don't go out of my way to make it super dry. The upside is that when you cook, you might not get the char, but it becomes more of a slightly saucy/wet dish. Which is also nice and tasty!