Pickled Yardlong Beans (Sichuan Pickled Cowpeas, Pao Jiang Dou)

Yardlong beans are a very popular choice for the pickle jar in Sichuan. We'll always encourage you to use the Sichuan natural-fermentation method to pickle your own vegetables, but sometimes it's nice to just have them at the ready. 

While they look like long green beans, yardlong beans are actually in the cowpea species, like the black-eyed pea, though they taste much more like a green bean than a black-eyed pea. Called jiang dou in Mandarin, the pickled version is used mostly as a cooking ingredient, and is particularly good stir-fried with ground pork or chicken for a "xiafan cai" rice topping or a zajiang noodle topping. 

These cowpeas were pickled in Sichuan, and they have the smell and taste of a naturally fermented pao cai, or pickled vegetable, with a nice little sour kick. However, because food regulators—both China's and the FDA—have a lot of rules for low-acid foods such as these, they do require preservatives when packaged. 

This is a good-sized bag. The second photo shows the contents of one bag. Once open, transfer to an air-tight container and store in refrigerator, where they will keep for quite a long time.