Lately, my spouse and I have been eating our way through Family Thai: Bringing the Flavors of Thailand Home by Arnold Myint and Kat Thompson (2025). It’s an excellent cookbook full of full-color photographs, and the food has been delicious, so I strongly recommend buying it if you like Thai food. As I’ve been making some of these dishes, I’m making my notes on this website. I’m making a few changes, particularly because I like spicy food but my tolerance isn’t up to the level of the original recipes.

This stir-fry dish features bacon and ground meat as the main source of protein (I used ground turkey here), with green beans and peppers as the main vegetable. Oyster sauce and fish sauce give it a slightly sweet, pungent flavor more common with Thai dishes than Chinese. I used American-style bacon rather than thicker pork belly because that’s what I had on hand, and that has its own flavor profile. Feel free to play around with the ingredients as you wish.

Sauce:
2 tbsp. oyster sauce
2 tbsp. black soy sauce
2 tbsp. fish sauce
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. white pepper

Stir-Fry:
5-6 slices bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces
8 oz. ground meat (turkey, beef, pork)
1 small onion or large shallot, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1-3 red Thai chiles, chopped (remove seeds for less heat)
2 c. green beans, ends trimmed and chopped into 1/2-inch pieces
1-2 peppers, chopped and seeds removed (bell pepper, Anaheim, jalapeno, etc.)
1/4 c. fresh Thai basil leaves, torn in half

Before you turn on the stove, mix up the sauce and cut all the ingredients that need to be chopped so you’re all ready for a blitzkrieg stir-frying session.

Heat the skillet to medium and cook the bacon, stirring occasionally until it’s partially cooked. Lift one side of the pan and let the grease drain to the bottom while you scoop out the bacon and move to a paper-towel-lined plate.

Turn up the heat to high and add the ground meat and onion. Stir occasionally as you cook until the meat is mostly cooked and the onion is translucent.

Add the garlic and chiles and cook for about half a minute until they’re fragrant.

Add the green beans and peppers, basil leaves, and sauce. Keep stirring and cooking until the peppers are softened and everything is well combined. The green beans can still be a little firm — you don’t have to get them fully soft, as this would take more time. Let them be slightly crunchy.

Serve over rice.