There's something comforting about the combination of warm rice, cooked egg, a toasty soy-sesame seasoning, and little bits of vegetables (and maybe meat). Fried rice is an all-time favorite for Chinese take-out, but it's also incredibly easy to prepare at home. Here are seven tips to help you make the perfect fried rice, no recipe required.
Rinse Your Rice Before Cooking
Giving your rice a quick rinse before cooking allows it to shed some starch and leads to less clumpy cooked grains. All the good egg bits and other tasty seasonings will then mingle well with the rice, evenly distributing flavor throughout the dish. To rinse rice, simply place it in a mesh sieve or a colander with small-sized holes, then run cool tap water over the top for about a minute, stirring with your fingers or a spoon.
Spread your cooked rice on a baking sheet, then place the baking sheet on a cooling rack to allow air to circulate around the pan. Let the rice stand for one to two hours until it's cooled to room temperature. Resting and cooling your rice allows excess moisture to evaporate, which also helps keep grains from clumping. If you want to do this a day or two ahead, let the rice cool completely, then refrigerate it in an airtight container. (Any leftover plain rice you have in the fridge already will also work well in fried rice.)
Prep Ahead
After the rice cools, the rest of the dish will come together in a hot pan very quickly. Have all of your desired add-ins prepped ahead and arranged in small bowls stove-side, so you can cook up the dish in a flash.
You don't need 20 ingredients to cook the perfect fried rice. Blend cooked rice with some aromatics (garlic, ginger, scallions), eggs, some veggies (carrot, peas, baby spinach, chopped bok choy, or broccoli) and, if you like, some raw or cooked protein (tofu, shrimp, chicken, pork, salmon—heck, even leftover brisket works well!).
Use a Large Wok or a Very Large Skillet
For fried rice, you want to use a pan that seems large, perhaps even extra-large, for the amount of rice and other ingredients you are using. This allows the ingredients to heat up quickly and evenly without overcooking, and gives you room to toss everything together without ingredients leaping or falling out of the pan.
Go Hot or Go Home
Make sure your pan is nice and hot before you add your rice and other ingredients. You want everything to cook together quickly, so that the rice gets very hot but doesn't overcook.
Season With Soy Sauce, Rice Vinegar, and Sesame Oil
While not every recipe calls for this fried rice trifecta, many of our favorites do. Why? Soy sauce is the salt element, rice vinegar gives the dish a touch of brightness, and sesame oil lends an utterly delicious, toasty note.
How to Make Fried Rice
Start by cooking your rice, then letting it rest and cool. One cup of dry/uncooked rice will serve four eaters.
In a very hot skillet with 1 to 2 tablespoons of canola or vegetable oil, cook your protein, then remove it from the skillet. (If you're using leftover cooked protein, skip this step and add it later.)
Add a little more oil to the skillet, make sure it's nice and hot, then add your ginger, garlic, and scallions. Cook for a minute or two, then add vegetables and cook them until crisp-tender.
Add soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame oil (start with a ratio of 4 tbsp.: 2 tbsp.: 1 tbsp., but you can modify this to taste), then add the cooked rice and cooked protein.
Heat everything through, then push the rice to the side of the skillet and stir in four beaten eggs. Work the eggs into the rice mixture as they cook. Serve immediately, topped with extra scallion greens and Sriracha or chili garlic sauce on the side, if desired.
Some of our favorite fried rice recipes include salmon, turkey, or simply vegetables. We even love a breakfast fried rice with sausage!
To give your dish that signature fried rice taste, you'll need to drizzle in sesame oil and soy sauce, but feel free to use as much or as little as you wish. You can even mix in things like garlic powder, ginger root, or Sriracha sauce and chili pepper for a bit of a kick.
Cooking bits of chopped vegetables, seasoning, soy sauce, and oil, seems easy enough. However, when making fried rice at home, there's one ingredient you may be overlooking: Sugar.
Fried rice syndrome is caused by a bacterium called Bacillus cereus, which is present in these types of starchy foods prior to cooking. Bacillus cereus is a heat-resistant bacteria, so even recooking foods that have not been appropriately refrigerated can result in food poisoning.
The answer: high heat, expert tosses, and something known as 'wok hei.' As J. Kenji López-Alt writes for Serious Eats, expert cooking with a wok (and the gas range it requires) is one of the main reasons that fried rice from a Chinese restaurant tastes so much better than what you can make at home.
To ensure that your rice is nicely fried, mix a bit of mayo in it before frying. The oil in the mayo will coat the rice so that it does not stick together.
Long grain rice has less starch which makes it the perfect choice for fried rice. Using a long grain rice like jasmine rice will result is soft and fluffy rice every time! Other rice varieties like short grain sushi rice would not work for fried rice. It would make the fried rice clumpy and almost gummy in texture.
Next, add chicken stock instead of salted water and let the rice boil on high heat for two minutes. Then, lower the heat and allow the rice to steam. “The rice will smell so fragrant from the thyme and garlic, with the thyme enhancing the flavor to another level,” he says.
1) Use cold rice: You've gotta plan ahead and use thoroughly-chilled cooked rice. A fresh batch of warm (or even lukewarm) rice will not fry well when it hits the hot pan, and will result in soggy and sticky clumps — no good. So leftover refrigerated rice is ideal!
And if you'd like to replicate that light sugary taste when making fried rice at home, just add a little bit of sugar. By dusting your homemade fried rice with a small amount of sugar, it will develop a mildly sweet flavor that will make it taste like you bought it from your go-to takeout joint.
It is key to the authentic flavor of this dish. Peanut oil. this is another ingredient that adds authentic flavor to this recipe, but if you have a peanut allergy in your household you can substitute canola oil or additional sesame oil for the peanut oil.
Chinese fried rice uses varieties of long-grain white rice, which includes the likes of basmati and jasmine. This gives the dish a characteristically dry, firm texture and leads to a little more crispness when fried. Japanese fried rice, on the other hand, uses short-grain white rice, like sushi rice aka Japanese rice.
“Like most food poisoning, fried rice syndrome can occur when you don't cook or store food at the right temperatures,” says Dr. Lee. “People call it 'fried rice syndrome' because the process of cooking rice, leaving it out and then reheating it creates a perfect environment for this germ.”
Its name translates to “egg rice,” and that's basically what it is – a raw egg mixed into piping hot rice. Don't be scared – the hot rice cooks the egg as you stir it in. The result is Japanese comfort food at its best – the most creamy, delicious bowl of rice you've ever had.
Chinese cooks normally use soybean oil, vegetable oil, or peanut oil, all of which have a high smoke point. Peanut oil usually has a pleasant nutty flavor and is suitable not only for stir-frying but also for deep-frying. Canola oil, which has a high smoke point but a neutral flavor, is also a good choice.
Sugar will also offer a nice contrast to the saltiness in your homemade fried rice, which helps replicate the flavor of takeout. This is why sugar should be considered one of the underrated ingredients to amp up your fried rice game.
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