Fried Rice is not generally one of my go-to dishes, or at least, it hasn’t been. Like casseroles and other one-pot-wonders, the kids have not historically been fans. However, their taste buds have been changing dramatically over these last months, and I’ve discovered it’s time to break out some of these recipes that I never make. Abigail really has to dislike something to not eat it. 9 times out of 10 she’s a clean your plate kind of girl. Zander still has his picky moments, but he’s definitely improving, and is at least willing try almost anything.
There is one key, and one key only to making good fried rice, and that is the rice. Whether you prefer white or brown rice, you must make it well ahead of time. It needs to be cold and in the refrigerator when you begin making fried rice, or you’ll end up with a great big pot of mush- and no one likes to eat a great big pot of mush. Using cold rice will keep the grains seperate while they fry up into magic with a few handfuls of veggies and seasonings.
And as far as the additions, this is one of those dishes to clean out the fridge with. Or in my case, I had a small handful of green beans and a small zucchini from the garden that weren’t enough to do anything with. By chopping them up and adding them to the fried rice, everyone got some without feeling deprived.
Fried Rice really is a non recipe, to be honest. I’ve looked up a couple of recipes online, and they are generally the same. What changes is the additions. So let’s walk through this, it’s easier than you think.
Start by chopping some vegetables (because your rice is already chilled, right?). Use what you have on hand. Yesterday’s rice had one onion, two celery stalks, four small carrots, half a bell pepper, half a cup of corn cut off the cob, about half a cup of chopped green beans, two cloves of garlic and one very small zucchini. Try to cut everything into uniform pieces, which in my case, was small. ( I was hoping to get Zander to gobble up some veggies without really realizing what he was doing. ) Then, get some oil in a pan, or in my case I used a wok, and start frying up the veggies. I always begin with onion for a few minutes by itself. Then I added the carrots and celery for a few more minutes to allow them to soften. And then I simply added everything else in. I tossed it and stirred it and fried it up until everything was softened.
Then, I added my protein. In this case, I diced up some leftover ham. The sky really is the limit here, and it’s amazing how far a small piece of meat will stretch in fried rice. This is a great way to use a little meat or tofu and feed a crowd. Here are my veggies and ham, looks great doesn’t it!
I could have eaten these veggies just like this! I added a swirl of soy sauce and a few grinds of pepper as well.
Next, I pushed this mixture around in the pan until I had a little donut of cooked veggies.
I added another drizzle of oil to the pan and dumped in my rice.
I added a healthy drizzle of soy sauce and black pepper to my rice at this point before frying it up as well. This rice was plain long grained white rice that I’d cooked up last week with the last bit of turkey broth from last Thanksgiving. We had a rice pilaf for dinner one night, but I’d accidentally cooked up twice the amount of rice I needed. It was nice having it already on hand, ready for me to use.
My method here then is to just start tossing the rice as it cooks in the oil. As you toss it, the veggies from the outside start working their way into the rice and they combine beautifully. Taste occasionally and add more soy sauce and black pepper as needed. I didn’t add salt this time around because I was using ham, and the soy also contributes some saltiness, though I do use a low-sodium soy. It really didn’t need any salt with the ham in it.
So then we need to make another donut out of our rice.
Next we’re going to add our eggs. I love scrambled egg in fried rice. It adds a different texture element and a great hit of protein as well-and for my dancers I thought this was a great idea. So I made another donut, added another small bit of oil, and added two eggs which I’d beaten with salt and pepper. I scrambled them up right there in the bottom of the pan, and then mixed everything together. Alternately, you can certainly scramble the eggs separately, and I’ve also seen fried rice with strips of egg instead of chunks. I prefer the chunks myself, but you can do what you like, or leave it out altogether.
And in the end, you have a very large bowl of fried rice. I think all told, I used about 1 cup of uncooked rice, which cooked up to be maybe 4 cups or so? When I made the initial pot of rice it was 2 cups of uncooked rice, so I would guess that I did use about half of it for each meal.
This fed four of us amply. I portioned out containers for the kids and I and then dumped the rest onto a large dinner plate for Andy to go in the fridge for him. I don’t think he ate it all, as it was a rather large pile of fried rice!
This reheated in the microwave beautifully. There was absolutely no loss of quality, and it was just as tasty reheated as it was fresh out of the pot. Abigail ate most of hers, though Zander seems to still not be a fan. It was like pulling teeth to get him to stop picking through it and trying to avoid the vegetables. But I think if I made this a few more times, he might come around.
Fried Rice is a great way to use leftover bits of this and that, or vegetables that are languishing and need to be used ASAP. Just make sure you begin with cold rice, and you can’t go wrong.