Try Green Beans in This Japanese Agebitashi

With an abundance of green beans and eggplant coming out of my garden this year, Ive been enjoying everything from stir-fries to ratatouille all summer. This week, for something a little different, I decided to turn my haul into a classic Japanese side dish.

Agebitashi (?????) literally means fried and soaked and is made by deep-frying vegetables naked, and then soaking them in a savory dashi broth. While certainly not as low-calorie as steaming, if the oil is hot enough, the escaping steam prevents too much oil from penetrating into the vegetables. Because frying evaporates the surface moisture from the vegetables, it makes the vegetables soak up the dashi like a sponge.

While you can make agebitashi with almost any firm vegetable (e.g. pumpkin, zucchini and carrots), I love using green beans and eggplant, both for their intense color, and wonderful texture. By flashing frying them, the green beans become tender, yet they retain a bit of crispness with an almost neon green color. The eggplant on the other hand becomes melt-in-your-mouth creamy while still retaining its vibrant purple hue.

Dashi is the Japanese word for broth and comes in many forms, but as with chicken or other types of broth, its best to make it from scratch. See this post for instructions on how to make dashi. Youll want to make the strong variety for this dish.