Lola’s Kitchen: Sajoer Beans Recipe

Posted May 22, 2015 by Lola in Lola's Kitchen / 16 Comments

Lola’s Kitchen is a feature on Lola’s Reviews where I talk about all things related to food, cooking and baking. These posts can be recipe posts or more discussion type posts about food. I love cooking and spend some time in the kitchen almost every day, so I wanted to give it a place on my blog as well. The banner for this feature is designed by Michelle from Limabean Design.

Sajoer beans is one of those easy and quick to serve dishes I always made out of a package. One week I had planned to make sajoer beans, but then on the actual day I wanted to make it I realized I didn’t buy the package. I grabbed a random recipe from the internet and gave it a try. Turns out it isn’t much harder to make it from scratch and it tastes just as good, maybe even better. The taste is more flavourfull and deeper when you make it yourself and you can add more spices if necessary. Since I found you could make it from scratch I’ve never bought a package anymore. It’s full of flavour and doesn’t take long to prepare.
This recipe is based on the dutch recipe of “Sajoer Boontjes” from “Uit Pauline’s Keuken”.
Sajoer Beans with Mie

Ingredients

Ingredients Sajoer Beans

  • Green Beans – 500 gram/ 4 cups chopped
  • Red bell pepper – 1
  • Garlic – 4 cloves
  • Onion – 1
  • Ketjap – 4 teaspoons
  • Sambal – 1 teaspoons
  • Coriander powder – 2 teaspoons
  • Ginger Powder – 2 teaspoons
  • Bouillon cube – 1
  • Coconut milk – 250 ml/ 1 cup
  • Salt – 1 teaspoon (optional)

This recipe feeds about 2-3 people. Serve with mie or noodles. You can also throw in a whole can of coconut milk, around 400 ml or 1 1/2 cup. Just let it cook a bit longer. It get’s a bit creamier taste when you add more coconut milk. If you like your food a bit spicy use 2 teaspoons of sambal instead of 1.

Method

  1. Slice and dice the beans and the paprika and then boil them for about 20 minutes.
  2. In the meantime slice and dice the onion and garlic
  3. Then mix the ketjap, sambal, coriander powder, ginger powder, salt and bouillon cube in a small bowl.
  4. When the beans and paprika are done cooking, drain them and set aside.
  5. Start baking the onion and garlic until the onion is translucent.
  6. If serving with mie or noodles, start cooking those now.
  7. Now add the paprika, beans and the mixed spices to the wok and stir well.
  8. Add the coconut milk and let it cook for a few more minutes.
  9. Enjoy your dinner!

Pictures

Cook the veggies

Cooking the beans and paprika

Combine the spices: sambal, coriander powder, ginger powder and a bouillon cube

Spices

After adding the Ketjap to the spices, it should look like this:

Spices after adding ketjap

And the veggies after cooking for 20 minutes

Cooked veggies

Bake the onion and garlic

Baking the onion and garlic

Add the veggies and the spiced to the wok

Add the spices

Stir well

Stir well

Empty the can of coconut milk. After doing this I realized the recipe only called for half a can, oops. But it turned out great and I liked the more creamy taste the extra coconut milk gave the recipe. Just make sure to cook a bit longer until desired thickness of the sauce.

Add the coconut milk

End result after cooking a while longer

Sajoer beans

Variation Tips

  • Vary with vegetables. While for some reason it’s called sajoer beans, there’s no reason why you can’t make this with other vegetables. Try throwing in some of your favourite vegetables.

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16 responses to “Lola’s Kitchen: Sajoer Beans Recipe

  1. Looks yummy! I wonder if there’s something you could replace the coconut oil with? Maybe?

    I started making everything from scratch that I could. It was the same for me. I started doing it one day because I didn’t have a packet of seasoning for tacos after getting the meat ready. I haven’t looked back since 😀 Glad you made a nice discovery with it 😀
    anna (herding cats & burning soup) recently posted…Day Shift (Midnight, Texas #2) by Charlaine HarrisMy Profile

    • I think you could replace the coconut oil with water, I tried this for a risotto once and it does taste different, but still good. Or if you want something more creamy maybe greek yoghurt or milk/ almond milk/ soy milk would probably work as well, it probably tastes a bit different, but I think it would work.

      And it’s so neat to discover you can make thigns like this from scratch, it’s mroe fun that way and gives better insight in how the taste is accomplished. I actually make a sajoer risotto once using the same spices, never would’ve thought of that if I hand’t make this from scratch.

  2. I’ve never cooked with coconut milk before. I’ve tasted it and I like it. I gave some to my rats and they liked it. This looks really good. I started buying a lot more fresh vegetables and cooking them different ways after finding out that I was diabetic 4 months ago. And now I love doing that instead of buying frozen and canned vegetables.
    Mary Kirkland recently posted…Freebie Friday!My Profile

    • I never did anything else with coconut milk except for cooking, coconut milk often goes in curries as well. Oh I’ll have to try and give some to my rats next time to see if they like it.
      I never have bought frozen veggies as my mom always bought fressh veggies, although she often bought them pre-cut while I prefer to slice the veggies myself as I am very specific on how big I want the slices. I used to buy a lot of sauces premade or packaged for sauce basis, while I try to make most things from scratch nowadays.
      Lola recently posted…Lola’s Kitchen: Sajoer Beans RecipeMy Profile

    • Hmm maybe I translated it wrong or it’s called differently there? Or Maybe they don’t sell it where you live. Ketjap is a sort of soy sauce, but sweeter instead of salty. Sambal is made from chili peppers and other ingredients, we use sambal badjak which isn’t too hot. Here’s the wikipedia page about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambal
      Same here, I always thought things like this were almost impossible to make or very complex, but it was pretty easy. Makign things from scratch is never are as complex as I think, so far.

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