Continuing my quest to fill the void in my life that's being caused by the temporary closure of our local Chinese take-out restaurant, I needed to make one of the staples of any Chinese dinner -- fried rice. I actually used a recipe I found for chicken fried rice but chose to omit the chicken and just use vegetables this time around.
Definitely a quick and easy recipe that you don't need to be a rocket scientist (or master chef) to make. This may catch you by surprise but the main ingredient you're going to need is rice. Fried rice is the perfect use for plain leftover rice you may have laying around of, as was my case, if you need to make a fresh batch of rice to turn into fried rice be sure you rinse the starch off so it isn't sticky rice. I've talked about making rice using the no measuring method before so I'll just do a quick review of this amazing trick I learned while living in South Korea.
Pour the amount of uncooked rice into a pan and then rinse it with cold water until the water is fairly clear. This rinses off most of the starch. Then level out the rice in the bottom of the pan, press your hand flat on the rice and add water until it just reaches the last knuckle on your hand. I used a just a tad less water this time around so that it would be a little drier when finished since I would be frying it right away.
The pan of rice goes onto high heat until it begins to boil, then the heat is reduced to a simmer and the pan covered. Leave it alone fo 20 minutes and when you remove the lid you will find it full of perfectly cooked rice. Amazing and it works. That's what I did here and by the time the rice was ready I had the other ingredients all ready to go.
Speaking of other ingredients, the spices and such consisted of a heaping tablespoon of minced garlic (I love garlic), 1 tablespoon of minced ginger (I actually cheated a little and used ginger paste), and 3 tablespoons of soy sauce.
One tablespoon of sesame oil was heated in a pan on medium heat and then the carrots and onions were added. It only took about 5 minutes until they were soft and ready to be joined by some friends. The spice and soy sauce mixture went in and warmed for about 20-30 seconds and then the rice was added.
This was really good. I was looking forward to having some leftovers the next day but we ended up with only a small serving left! Adding some pork or chicken, or just as it was, would let this be a meal by itself. This time around we used it as a side dish for several other dishes -- the broccoli and beef I wrote about earlier plus some pot stickers (nope, I didn't make them -- they were from Costco and heated in the air fryer). It was a nice dinner and didn't even involve a delivery driver! I'll definitely be making this again soon.
Bon appetit!
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