New York-Style Chinese Fried Rice

[fodgycakes]

Here's my method. It won't be like the restaurant, again because of the lack of very high heat and the seasoning of the wok but for home it works. Double black soy sauce is what many of you might be looking for to get the dark color in the soy sauce.

1. Heat vegetable/canola oil in the widest/deepest pan you have until it's as hot as you can get it.

2. Throw in some chopped onion, shallot, and/or the white part of green onions. Variation: some minced ginger. Keep stirring as you add the rest of the ingredients.

3. Add any uncooked vegetables or meat immediately. Also add some minced garlic. This could go in step 2 but I like to add it a bit later since garlic burns faster.

4. Add your day old cold rice that has been broken up from any clumping. Now in the restaurant you would keep adding the rest of the ingredients right away but at home, let the rice cook without any liquid seasoning yet to let it have time to get fried. I like to sprinkle in just a bit of salt at this stage to get some seasoning in there. I like to stop stirring and pat the rice down flat in the pan, then once it starts getting a bit brown I flip the rice to get the other side a bit brown.

5. Once the rice is fried to your liking (which can take 5-10 minutes at home), add cooked vegetables and meat. You might only have a step 3 or step 5, depending on if what you have on hand for additions is raw or cooked. Now get stirring again.

6. Add your seasoning. I add black pepper, some people use white pepper. For saltiness I add salt, fish sauce, or regular soy sauce. Sometimes I use some combination of the three. Fish sauce would be for a more Vietnamese fried rice, soy for Chinese. Then for that color a lot of people like, add double black soy sauce. It is thick and made with molasses and doesn't add much flavor. I like the combination of a good regular soy sauce like Kikkoman and then the double black for color because then I get both the color and the good flavor I like. You can also add a bit of sesame oil if you like and possibly even a bit of water if you think things have gotten a bit too dry. I personally like fried rice dry but if you don't, add water.

7. Keep stirring and a minute before everything comes together to your liking (any added meat and veggies have been heated up evenly, etc.), make a well in the middle and add a beaten egg and the green portion of a chopped scallion. Let it cook up just a few seconds, then stir again to chop up the egg and distribute. Get the rice out on plates just before the egg is done cooking. This last part goes fast.

[Jason Perlow]

NY Retro Style Fried Rice Porn for visual reference:

House Special Fried Rice from King Yum in Fresh Meadows, Queens (NY). This is the Fried Rice that set the benchmark for me, growing up.

Egg Foo Young and Roast Pork Fried Rice from Chan's Dragon Inn, Ridgefield NJ. I like this one a lot, but the roast pork flavor isnt as intense as the one from King Yum.

Young Chow Fried Rice from Lee's Hawaiian Islander, Lyndhust NJ. Rachel thought it was too salty but I thought the flavor was good. It wasnt as dark as I like and I'm unsure about how I feel in regards to lettuce being a fried rice ingredient. Points scored for having actual lobster in it.

Edited July 12, 2006 by Jason Perlow (log)

[kangarool]

I'm not sure what's your goal here.

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The topic title says it, to get fried rice at home as close to old-school NY-style chinese restaurant fried rice as possible.

Fried rice is not a flambe.

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Thanks for that.

That feels quite wrong in terms of getting the desired texture

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You’ve misunderstood. I’m not talking about a flambe, I’m talking about getting the flames to lick into the bowl of the wok… I’m talking about intense heat, all around the rice. I’m talking about doing whatever I possibly can to channel Bayard St. into my rice.

The wok hay you see mentioned is not flame. A decentish literal translation is "the breath of the wok".

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Thanks for explaining that, haven’t come across that before.

A good analogy is properly done french fries.

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Don’t follow deep fried sliced potatoes as an analogy at all.

French fries on fire, wrong.

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Thanks for the tip.

Your problem here is not enough heat.

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Your problem here is that you’re wrong, I do have enough heat.

If you wish to feed more than one person, you're screwed.

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No, I’m not screwed. Worked perfectly for 4 of us last night.

If you can live with home-style fried rice, then you're fine again.

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Don’t have to. Worked perfectly.

OK. Feel better now.

In fact I feel great, ‘cause the rice turned out spectacularly. I’m there. I’ve got it. It’s now mine, forever.

Followed Jason’s Chinese-restaurant-in-Jersey tips from page 1, petty much to the letter, and got what I was after, the rice had heaps of colour (not from soy, but the little black sear marks from a fiery wok that make it), some beautiful BBQ pork bought here in Melbourne’s Chinatown yesterday chopped up, day old rice, fresh little prawns/shrimp, peas & onions. Thin omelette of egg, pre-cooked and chopped up (that bit varies from Jason’s guy’s instructions). Bit of salt, dash kikkoman, no MSG. Then I set the kitchen alight and a minute or so later, Pell St. at home.

Easy.

/kanga

edited to say no msg, not no soy

Edited July 13, 2006 by kangarool (log)

[Torrilin]

Don’t follow deep fried sliced potatoes as an analogy at all.

I was attempting to provide a familiar western dish that has elements of what a Chinese person might call wok hay. Not the same, but an analogy. Most western dishes aren't served at a temperature that a Chinese person would feel is appropriate for a stir fried dish, but french fries come close. The deep fried texture is quite wrong, but good french fries have a balance between heat, steam and the actual food that does resemble the best Chinese food I've had. I'm specifying Chinese, because in my experience, other Asian cultures do not exalt the wok hay sort of feel the way Chinese do. And further, not all Chinese diaspora cultures are the same. My Indonesian-Chinese friends and my Taiwanese friends don't cook in anything like a Chinese restaurant style, because their families are from different parts of China.

(And I know it sounds like I'm talking solely about temperature, but wok hay is not just temperature. It's not just wok seasoning. It's not just that wonderful stir fried texture. It's one of those concepts that just doesn't translate well, and I'll probably be banging my head on for the rest of my life.)

I'm glad you did get it right last night .

Emily

Edited July 13, 2006 by Torrilin (log)

[Jason Perlow]

In fact I feel great, ‘cause the rice turned out spectacularly. I’m there. I’ve got it. It’s now mine, forever.

Followed Jason’s Chinese-restaurant-in-Jersey tips from page 1, petty much to the letter, and got what I was after, the rice had heaps of colour (not from soy, but the little black sear marks from a fiery wok that make it), some beautiful BBQ pork bought here in Melbourne’s Chinatown yesterday chopped up, day old rice, fresh little prawns/shrimp, peas & onions. Thin omelette of egg, pre-cooked and chopped up (that bit varies from Jason’s guy’s instructions). Bit of salt, dash kikkoman, no MSG. Then I set the kitchen alight and a minute or so later, Pell St. at home.

Well, you are not going to get an -exact- replica of what they do in a restaurant -- but the end product is going to be good, nevertheless.

At home, with a 15Kbtu burner on a Viking or DCS or Wolf or similar "Pro" home range, you're at about 10 percent of the output of what your mid-range Chinese wok burner can do. Still, with a smaller wok, and by pre-cooking the various vegetable and meat components in small batches, and then integrating the rice at the end, you can still get nice results.

The chopped up omelet versus cooking the omelet in with the rice thing is a stylistic choice -- one is Cantonese/Chinese-American and the other is more of a Taiwanese style.

Edited July 13, 2006 by Jason Perlow (log)