Your Fried Rice Recipe/Technique

Cafe Society
1

It’s been awhile since we’ve had a good fried rice thread, and I’d love to see other folks’ techniques.

Over the last several years I’ve gotten my recipe to something relatively quickly, fairly reliable, and super-delicious. Here’s what I do:

The day before: Make more Jasmine rice than I need for dinner that night, so I have a quart or so of leftover rice in the fridge.

The day of:

  • Scramble 2-3 eggs with a dollop of tamari. (This makes the egg brown instead of yellow. You can go with yellow by subbing salt for the tamari. I like the brown, it makes my non-meaty fried rice look meaty).
  • Cook in a wok with plenty of oil, to make an “egg pancake.” Flip, and remove when it’s cooked, and at some point later in the process cut into bite-sized pieces. Instead of oil, use bacon grease if you’ve got it.
  • Add a little more oil, along with a diced onion and 2 diced carrots.
  • Add a good sprinkling of turmeric. This’ll result in a lovely color to the finished dish.
  • Cook until the veggies are soft.
  • Add a spoonful of minced garlic and a good grating of fresh ginger. Cook for a few more seconds.
  • Add a little more oil, along with the day-old rice. Stir like the dickens.
  • Hold your nose and sprinkle in a generous dollop of fish sauce. Also add more tamari and some sesame oil.
  • Thaw some frozen peas and some frozen salad shrimp in the microwave. Toss them, along with the egg pieces, into the fried rice.

When it’s done, the golden-yellow rice will be dotted with bright greens, oranges, and pinks. It’ll be umami and salty, with bursts of sweetness from the veggies and shrimp.

I know some folk like to cook the egg directly with the rice. I prefer the texture of cooking the egg separately, but to each their own.

How do you handle your fried rice?

2

It sounds like you have your fried rice down to a science. I too, used to cook the egg with the rice but I changed to cooking the egg separately like you. It just makes things more manageable to cook. The turmeric addition is a great idea, I will do that next time I make a batch.

The only improvement I can think to suggest is to add a little bit of toasted sesame oil in with whatever other oil you’re using. I just add a little dollop in with a couple tablespoons of peanut oil. Doesn’t have to be much, a little goes a long way. But I consider the toasted sesame flavor addition to be integral to fried rice.

3

Sesame oil is in the “fish sauce” step :). I add it here instead of earlier because I think of it as a flavoring, not as a cooking oil. Do you add it earlier? Definitely its toastiness is a lovely flavor note to balance out the brightness of the ginger and sweetness of the veggies and shrimp.

Note about turmeric: its color is so delightful, but its flavor can easily overwhelm. I like it to be barely-there, just enough that you get a faint hint of its odd bitter aromatic. Unfortunately I have no idea what quantity I use, so I just wrote “a good sprinkle.” Starting with just a little bit and adding more would be much better than dumping a tablespoon in and creating a dish of sadness.

4

This way:

5

Oops, I missed that! Yes, I usually do just add the sesame oil with the peanut cooking oil earlier on, but you’re right, I probably would get more flavor out if it by adding later. Clearly you are the master and I am just the apprentice when it comes to fried rice.

6

Yeah, for me, if I’m adding toasted sesame oil, it’s always at the end. (And I do go back and forth between doing the egg completely separately, or doing it with the rice after first cooking it a bit like the above video. I’m not sure which I like best, but separately it is a bit easier.)

7

That video is super-cool. I should play with marinated meat sometime instead of shrimp, see how that affects the outcome. I have, one a few occasions, added some leftover NC pulled pork, and that’s delicious.

8

If you like Chinese food, check out other videos on that channel. There’s a another fried rice video I posted from there, but I swapped it out with the one that is currently showing in the thread. Their videos are fascinating and full of all the geeky and nerdy food details, history, and the like that I enjoy hearing. They do try to keep things accessible and explain substitutions where appropriate, but if you want a resource for regional Chinese cooking in English, it’s hard to go wrong with Chinese Cooking Demystified’s channel.

9

I’ll do the basic Egg Fried rice here. If you want something like chicken or prawns with this, cook it beforehand, put aside and mix together at the end. But the basic is the classic.

  1. Undercook come rice, al dente, by a few minutes, and leave for an hour in a sieve to dry out a little. I prefer American Long grain, rather than the more exotic (and expensive) basmati or jasmine.
  2. Scramble fry two eggs in a tablespoon of your choice of oil in a wok, until broken into small pieces.
  3. Add rice. Add salt, rice needs salt. Stir fry for three minutes.
  4. Add tablespoon of light soy sauce into the edge of the wok, and a teaspoon of dark soy sauce at the edge of the wok. Stir fry another two minutes.
  5. Take off heat, drizzle in a small amount of toasted sesame oil. This scents and helps separate the rice a little.
10

My process is similar, but with a few different bits and pieces. First off, since I have an electric stove (boo!) I use a Wok over a Turkey fryer rig out on the cement porch, so this is a spring/summer/fall cooking - during winter I do half-assed fried rice in an electric skillet, which seems to do better than stovetop for me.

I use sesame oil both added to the peanut oil for the cooking stage, and a drizzle for finishing.

I use day-old jasmine rice, which I make sure I get to room temperature before frying, and when possible, placed adjacent to a clean fan for an hour or two to better dry, but that’s not normally much of an issue here in colorado where the humidity tends to be low anyway.

I use my full sodium soy sauce (wife normally gets reduced salt) for fried rice, or if out, yeah, it needs more salt for the traditional flavor.

Vegetation is usually peas, finely diced carrot and onion, all cooked ahead, so that I’m not worrying about getting it cooked just right or cooling my rice. Minced garlic and ginger go in before the rice to add to the fragrant oil, and are scraped out prior to the rice to prevent burning, put back in at the end. I do add finely sliced spring/green onions but normally only before serving.

I do use fish sauce, but only a touch, a little goes a long way. I can see the coloring effect of the turmeric, but don’t care for the flavor, so that would be a no for me.

Additional flavor bombs are based on my years in the southwest, so stir-fried chiles, dried or whole, or in a pinch red pepper flake are a must. A small dollop of siracha will also do, and I often add that to the eggs while beating them. Depending on everything, it sometimes needs a smidge of brightening, for which a bit of mirin (for sweetness) or lemon juice for acidity can be a finishing touch.

Meat/protein wise, my wife goes with fried tofu on top, and I’ll either pre-stir fry a few shrimp, or if I have it (and I normally plan for it), use leftover diced homemade char sui. Bonus points if I cheese it and made it with a teaspoon of red food coloring so it looks like the bright cherry red chinese bbq pork of my childhood. In a pinch, I also add pre-cooked crumbled bacon I keep in the fridge.

One thing I’ll mention, is that sometimes, if I want it to be restaurant-like, I’ll flat out cheat and use my MSG shaker. It does make a huge difference, and if you’ve ever had tepanyakki or the like, you’ve seen them (well, in most places) add plenty. But it does feel like cheating.

11

I know this goes against all the rules, but I usually cook the egg with the rice at the very end. It doesn’t end up in pieces, but rather coats each grain of rice almost like carbonara. I like it, even if it’s different than most recipes.

My recipe is usually something like saute onions and garlic, maybe peas and carrots, then add rice and soy/fish sauce + hot sauce, stir fry altogether and add egg with just a minute or two left at the end. Then a bit of seasoning salt and pepper.

12

not a huge difference in my approach other than I don’t normally add egg (allergy in the family) and chillis and chopped ginger are always in there.
A couple of suggestions, I don’t use tamari but rather use a dash of oyster sauce. Also,right at the end just before serving I stir in some chopped spring onions, coriander and a dash of mirin.

13

I think the “egg at the end” is a different style. Plenty of folks like it that way, just not my thing. Oyster sauce is interesting–isn’t that usually a little sweet? I tend not to be a big fan of sweet sauces (so Sriracha isn’t normally my favorite). Scallions are a great idea, and I should try those out.

Chilis are great in fried rice, but my kids are pretty intolerant of them, so we usually just add spice to our individual bowls, breaking out the Sriracha (I know, I know) or other hot sauce.

Coriander=cilantro, right? Not the seeds, the fresh leaves?

14

Oyster sauce is a bit sweet, yes. I don’t really think of it as “sweet” because it’s balanced out by the salt and umami of the other ingredients, but sugar is one of the primary ingredients. I myself don’t use it in fried rice, but when whipping up a basic stir-fry, it’s probably my most often used sauce (in conjunction with Chinese soy sauce, and sometimes fish sauce.) I tend not to like sweet (like I think most sweet-and-sour dishes are kind of disgusting), but oyster sauce works for me.

15

What I wanted to suggest too.
And depending on what your fridge happens to have on offer: mushrooms, whatever kind - except boletus - thoroughly fried; scallops, lightly fried; scallions; any root other than the carrot you already have, diced in your step 3 (parsnip, turnip…); bamboo shoots… Toasted sesame seeds!
Jasmine rice is fine, I like it a bit stickier though, but I also have tried basmati and parboiled, which are not sticky at all. Basmati tastes great but is quite easy to overcook and break. Being quite Spanish in my coocking I tend to use olive oil with and before the sesame oil.

16

I do it very much like the OP except I’m an egg at the ender. I do most of the seasoning near the end, I start out light with all the seasonings then adjust as it goes.

If it’s not being used in some other dish I’ll add a sprinkling of 5 spice.

17

You guys are awesome.

Fried rice for me is a quick and dirty weekday night meal. Leftover pork steak, carrots I softened in the microwave, instant rice…

A few months back I did try a authentic (as far as I know) golden fried rice recipe that I enjoyed. I had read something about it being an earlier/different version of the classic fried rice and I was intrigued.

18

Fried rice has been a cooking blind spot of mine for a long time. I’ve never got satisfactory results compared with the local cheap takeout place. The SDMB has been quite an inspiration in the kitchen for me lately so maybe I’ll revisit. The biggest problem has been texture. The rice often comes out gummy so I suppose my heat was too low?

19

What sort of rice are you using? That makes a big difference. For good fried rice, you’ll want a long grain, starchy, but not too starchy, and rinsed (generally) at least 3 times or until the water comes clear prior to steaming. Then you want it dry, and yeah, cooked over higher heat, and definitely don’t crowd the pan.

20

For good fried rice, you want to begin with the right rice. A medium to long grain rice is the best. Something like Jasmine rice is good. You could use Basmati, but that’s a waste in my opinion; best use that for South Asian or Middle Eastern cuisine. A short grain rice like that used for sushi is right out as it will tend to clump together; so is something like arborio used for risotto.

Once you’ve chosen the rice, you have to treat it right. Wash the rice before cooking it. Repeat until the water runs clear; you’ll probably have to do this three or four times. This will get rid of the excess starch that has accumulated on the surface of the grains which will also cause clumping and gumminess.

Now that you have cooked rice, do NOT use it immediately for fried rice. There is too much moisture in fresh-cooked rice. Eat the fresh rice with, I dunno, beef with broccoli or something. Store the leftover rice in the refrigerator and use THAT for your fried rice the next day.

Finally, when making your fried rice, cook the components separately. Make sure your wok is HOT, HOT, HOT. Stir fry one ingredient, take it out. Stir fry the next ingredient, take it out. Keep your wok HOT. Stir fry the rice last then add the rest of the already-cooked ingredients. Toss in sesame oil and garnish with green onions. Enjoy!