Fried Rice

[C. sapidus]

Some of you (including our boys, unfortunately) may be sick of my fried rice. We usually riff off the recipe in Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, as described in my foodblog (clicky). Constants include eggs, scallions, fish sauce, lots of garlic, and either roasted chile paste, red curry paste, or sriracha. Chorizo, if we have any, is a lovely (if nontraditional) addition. If the fridge fails to yield leftover meat or fish, we usually stir-fry a batch of salt and pepper shrimp. For example:

The accompaniments are half the fun. Apparently on this particular evening cleaning out the fridge yielded Thai basil, cilantro, cucumbers, lime wedges, tomatoes, and shredded green mango.

Nasi goreng is always welcome . . .

. . . as is curry fried rice with fish fillets, bacon, and coconut milk . . .

. . . and crab fried rice is wonderful when we are feeling extravagant:

I love fried rice partly because it's never the same thing twice when I make it.

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Hey, I resemble that remark. Five-spice chicken fried rice:

Fish fried rice with chorizo:

Bacon fried rice with Poblano chiles, orange bell peppers, and roasted chile paste:

Ancho chile shrimp fried rice with roasted Portobello mushrooms.

And finally, this is what happens when I am waiting for a dishwasher repairman:

With time on my hands, I emptied out the produce drawers with a highly experimental batch of fried rice. I cracked coconut cream and fried Thai chiles, garlic, ginger, red bell pepper, chile jam, tamarind, and palm sugar. When the bell peppers began to soften I added the mushrooms and rice, and then scrambled in an egg. Off the heat, I seasoned with Thai basil, mint leaves, scallions, and fish sauce. Topped with a can of “fried clarias fish with chilli” and served with a lime wedge. Spicy!

[MomOfLittleFoodies]

I'm in the same fried rice school as Lilja. I grew up with both the "take out Chinese" style fried rice, and the white fried rice.

My kid's favorite fried rice is white rice, chopped bacon, peas, garlic, salt and pepper... it's my husband's specialty (along with pancakes and scrambled eggs). It's pretty much the same as his mom's recipe except that she adds eggs and carrots, the latter of which are always undercooked. My sister-in-law takes pretty much the same recipe, but uses Chinese sausage instead of bacon.

My favorite fried rice is one that I get at a Vietnamese restaurant in the city my parents live in, which sadly, I only get to go to twice a year.

[faine]

Your fried rice photos are majestic and are also making me exceptionally hungry.

[SuzySushi]

Hey, you guys have forgotten Japanese fried rice, made with short-grain rice. And Korean kimchi fried rice. And the smoky fried rice served at my wedding reception at a local Chinese restaurant. Its secret ingredient was bacon fat.

I'm also of the never-make-the-same-fried-rice-twice school. It's an adventure that raises leftovers to gastronomic heights.

[SobaAddict70]

Leftover rice and garlic. Sometimes a beaten egg or Chinese pork sausage, sliced thinly. Minced scallion.

That's it.

[MomOfLittleFoodies]

Hey, you guys have forgotten Japanese fried rice, made with short-grain rice. And Korean kimchi fried rice. And the smoky fried rice served at my wedding reception at a local Chinese restaurant. Its secret ingredient was bacon fat.

I'm also of the never-make-the-same-fried-rice-twice school. It's an adventure that raises leftovers to gastronomic heights.

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The fried rice we make at home uses short grain rice... the only things I use long grain rice for are pilaf, Mexican rice, and Arroz con Pollo.

[prasantrin]

When I was young, we'd sometimes have tuna fried rice, or corned beef (the kind from a can) fried rice. They're actually quite good, but both need onions (whereas, for example, for me onions are optional in chicken and salted fish fried rice.

[Lilija]

Hey, you guys have forgotten Japanese fried rice, made with short-grain rice. And Korean kimchi fried rice. And the smoky fried rice served at my wedding reception at a local Chinese restaurant. Its secret ingredient was bacon fat.

I'm also of the never-make-the-same-fried-rice-twice school. It's an adventure that raises leftovers to gastronomic heights.

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The fried rice we make at home uses short grain rice... the only things I use long grain rice for are pilaf, Mexican rice, and Arroz con Pollo.

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Ditto!

[scubadoo97]

Bruce- Never tire of your food pics. Always amazing to look at and I'm sure are as tasty as they look.

[snowangel]

I hate to break the news, Susan, but in Hua Hin they serve their fried rice with bird chili vinegar -- and, yes, with limes:

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I can't believe I forgot to mention the bird chili vinegar. Essential (also essential for most Thai noodle dishes. Every hole in the wall has a bowl of this on every table!

[C. sapidus]

faine and scubadoo, thanks for the kind words!

I can't believe I forgot to mention the bird chili vinegar.

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Susan, yes to the bird chile sauce. Nuoc cham also hits the spot.

[snowangel]

“fried clarias fish with chilli”!

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[C. sapidus]

Bruce, this particular product looks VERY interesting.  Got a photo of the jar/can?

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Susan, here you go: Fried catfish with chile. Clarias fish is catfish, so this appears to be the same product with a different label.

[Chris Amirault]

I'm increasingly convinced that I need to up my fried rice game, as I'm filling a bento box each work morning. Great ideas in here already, but surely there are more!

[Doodad]

Fried rice in our house is a leftover vehicle like jambalaya or brunswick stew etc.

But, what does not change is the sauce. After lots of playing around I have a mix that contains oyster sauce and sesame oil that hits the spot. The portions are not measured on any of it, the ingredients are whats leftover or needed to be used. So never ever the same dish. We do try to mix in our favorite side dishes to keep an Asian theme, but other than that anything goes.

In fact, we had cioppino and rice last night so I bet fried rice is on the horizon.

[nakji]

My favourite is kimchi fried rice with lots of pork - I prefer bacon, not spam, as is traditional, and lots of sesame seeds and nori for garnish, with the necessary fried egg spilling molten yolk over, of course.

Alternatively, when I'm in a Hanoi sort of mood, I like it with chinese sausage, pineapple, egg, and cilantro, with squirts of tuong ot on the side. Limes if available, but I can do without.

[John Rosevear]

It's usually very simple, as fried rice is usually a quick lunch or side dish in my house: chopped scallions, wok-scrambled eggs, ordinary white rice (cold, a bit dry), light soy sauce, and a bit of Maggi, which I started adding ages ago when I was trying to duplicate a restaurant's recipe. (These days I use a bit of La Choy soy sauce instead -- it's a horrible soy sauce, but a pretty good gluten-free substitute for Maggi).

If I have Chinese sausage I'll add some, and sometimes I do a yang chow-ish variant with shrimp and peas and whatnot, and sometimes I use rice that was cooked in a Chinese-style chicken stock or take a Thai approach with fish sauce etc., but the above is what I do most of the time.

[Kouign Aman]

Left-over, sat in the fridge a day or so, rice. Short, long, white, brown, whatever.

a bit of sesame oil, smashed fermented blackbeans, soysauce (i like San J tamari),

eggs scrambled in, bacon. Season w black pepper til its good and spicy.

Carnitas works well in this, as do pretty much any left-over cooked vegetables.

Finely chopped kale or steamed spinach are excellent additions up to a high % by volume.

I fry in the veg before adding the egg.

Basic recipe came from McCall's cookbook when I was a kid.

Added the sesame oil and black beans later.

Added the variety of meats, veg etc as I needed an easy meal and the fridge needed space made.

Might try the vinegar on the side. Sounds interesting.

[BKYLN]

At the restaurant I work at, whoever is doing the Meat/Fish station has to prepare family meal for the 2-3 dishwashers at the end of the night. Sometimes we have random bits of meat (sometimes hot dogs) that need to be used up. I often make the guys big plates of fried rice. I do it in a wok, like this:

-High heat

-squirt of oil

-finely sliced red Anaheim chiles and scallions

-spoonful of our Ginger Garlic Relish (raw ginger, garlic, scallions, cilantro, soy sauce, and vegetable oil pureed coarsely)

-healthy doses of both soy sauce and sweet soy (Kecap Manis)

-leafy green vegetable that we have extra of...bok choy, water spinach, brussels sprouts leaves, etc.

-diced meat

-large amount of steamed rice

-toss to combine

-lift handle of wok to move everything to the other side, leaving an open space in the wok, and add 2-3 beaten eggs per serving

-let the eggs scramble a little, then toss again to combine and coat the entire thing lightly in egg

-empty onto plate, finish with a lot of Sriracha (our dishwashers are all from Ghana/Ivory Coast, so they like it SPICY)

[saltedgreens]

Duck fat

Rendered bacon and fat

Garlic and ginger

Onion

Short grain rice

Scallion

Sesame oil

Soy sauce

Brown sugar

The above is just a single version of many...

It's been great reading all of your posts.

[Prawncrackers]

I don’t think I’ve ever fried rice without egg, in other words I’ve always made egg-fried rice. I like to keep mine pretty pure in a Cantonese sense, just a little garlic/scallion/ginger/soy and finished with peas. If I’m lucky there may be some bits of Char-siu too. But there is one thing I do that is unconventional and that I’ve never seen anyone else do. I mix the egg with the cooked rice first, really beat it in with a pair of chopsticks so all the grains are covered and the mixture is really airy. Does anyone else do this? I really like the way it turns out, each grain is separate and there are no lumps of egg anywhere.

[nakji]

I don’t think I’ve ever fried rice without egg, in other words I’ve always made egg-fried rice. I like to keep mine pretty pure in a Cantonese sense, just a little garlic/scallion/ginger/soy and finished with peas. If I’m lucky there may be some bits of Char-siu too. But there is one thing I do that is unconventional and that I’ve never seen anyone else do. I mix the egg with the cooked rice first, really beat it in with a pair of chopsticks so all the grains are covered and the mixture is really airy. Does anyone else do this? I really like the way it turns out, each grain is separate and there are no lumps of egg anywhere.

Yes, I've seen this done in Korea. In kalguksu restaurants, if you get shabu shabu along with your noodles, after the soup is done and you've eaten all your noodles up, the ladies will take your pot off the burner and make fried rice in it. They take out any extra soup, and beat an egg in a bowl with steamed rice and minced vegetables like carrot and green onion. They then spread this mixture all along the inside of the soup pot, return it to the flame, and let the lot crisp up, soaking up the oil and flavour left over from the soup. They scrape the whole thing around several times on the heat until the egg is set. You get to scrape it off with a spoon. It's excellent, especially with a few drops of the soy/vinegar/wasabi dip leftover from the meat.

They do a similar thing when you get ddalk galbi, and make fried rice in the pan leftover from cooking your chicken. Korean fried rice is the only kind of fried rice I've ever craved.

[emilyr]

One of my dad's absolute favorite dishes is fried rice. I made it for dinner the other night and he said, repeatedly, that I could make it again later this week, too. I may just make him a big batch to have for lunches at work. He lived for a time in Hawaii, and the way he showed me to make it, they made at all the little diners he went to and one that he worked at. It's totally Americanized, but good and filling and it travels well.

Fry some onions, garlic and ginger in oil. Add cold, leftover rice. Fry til the edges get a bit crispy, then stir in frozen peas and carrots and cold leftover chicken/pork/whatever meat. Cook til veggies defrosted. Add soy sauce and mix. Push the rice and veggies to one side of the pan and crack in some eggs. Scramble a bit, and when they're about half-cooked, stir into the rice. let the rice get a little coated with the eggs, but with plenty of chunks of scrambled in there as well.

Sometimes I cook the eggs entirely separately and then fold in the bigger bits, but usually I only do this when I'm not adding any meat. I also don't generally use just soy sauce - the other night, for example, I used hoisin, soy and a little cider vinegar (we were out of rice vinegar). Sometimes, when I'm super lazy, I've made the dish with entirely pre-made products: frozen, steamable rice, frozen veggies, canned chicken breast and stir fry sauce from a jar. It's not nearly as good, but it passes. Also, I used a mixed veggie bag instead of just peas and carrots, and my dad acted like a 4-year-old; I found his bowl with a little pile of corn and green beans on the side. Apparently those are anathema in this version.

Personally, I like to use leftover stir-fried or grilled veggies for mine, and I'm definitely going to try adding some sausage next time!

[nakji]

I keep a bag of veggie ends in the freezer - bits of carrot or red pepper chopped fine, leftover from trimming and cooking other dishes. When I want to make fried rice, I take them out and sprinkle them in the pan from the frozen state. Convenient and frugal.

[David Ross]

I vary the ingredients I add to my fried rice, but the one thing I don't ever vary is the technique I use for cooking the rice.

I typically use Basmati rice--probably not the first choice of most home cooks. I prefer the long-grains and the earthy scent of Basmati rice.

I soak and rinse the rice in at least 5 changes of water to remove as much starch as possible before I cook the rice in a basic rice steamer. After the rice cools down, I cover the rice and let it sit overnight to allow the rice to chill down and any remaining starch to set back down.

On day two, I'll separate the chilled rice in my fingers so that I'm not faced with big chunky rice balls.

I was getting frustrated in recent years when I cooked fried rice because it continually came out "soggy" and just didn't have the same texture as fried rice from a restaurant. (Obviously I didn't realize that it was probably due to the fact that I don't have a high-output flame heating the wok on my home stove).

My cooking technique may sound a bit odd, but it seems to work for me in coming close to replicating the fried rice I find in restaurants. I heat a large, non-stick skillet over high heat. No oil, no butter no fat, just a dry, non-stick skillet. Then in goes the rice for a blast of dry heat. The rice gets a little crusty and a few black, charred bits on it--just the way I like it. I stir the rice around just for a minute or two, then in goes the garnishes--ham, egg, chinese sausage, shrimp, carrots, whatever. Next in the pan is a few dashes of sesame oil and a slug of soy sauce. On a rare occasion I'll add a dash of rice wine or Chinese black vinegar.

I always finish my fried rice with a scattering of peas and chopped green onion.