Fried Rice


 Ingredients:

  • 1 cup rice
  • 2 cups water
  • Veg oil
  • 2 eggs
  • 4 cloves (1 tbsp & 1 tsp) garlic
  • Ginger to preference
  • 1 onion
  • 1 lb protein (chicken, pork, beef, tofu)
  • Vegetable mix (suggestions: cabbage, carrots, broccoli/cauliflower, celery, snap/snow peas, mushrooms. Even premade frozen veg mix would work)
  • Sauces (suggestions: any combination of teriyaki, hoisin, sriracha, sesame oil, sweet chili Thai, soy, honey garlic)
Instructions:

  1. Heat oil at a low temp in wok/skillet/pan (I've got a wok, will use as default term from hereon out)
  2. Dice 1 onion, mince ginger and garlic. Keep separate from rest of vegetables
  3. Prepare vegetable mix if using fresh. Keep in separate bowl
  4. Dice protein if using cuts
  5. Prepare rice. I've got a rice cooker, so I put 1 cup rice and 2 cups water, set it to cook and let it go until it defaults to the warm setting. If using a pot, add the rice and water and cook at a low temperature until the rice has absorbed all the water. You can do this while cooking the vegetables and protein. If using tofu, add to a separate pan, as it takes longer to cook than other proteins
  6. Add onion, garlic, and ginger to to wok. 
  7. Add protein, cook until mostly done. 
  8. Add rest of vegetables
  9. Add rice when it's ready. Crack 2 eggs into wok. I immediately mix the eggs with the rice for a more "integrated" effect but a lot of people like to partially cook them before mixing so there's little chunks of egg throughout
  10. Cook until the golden colour of the egg solidifies in the rice
  11. Add whatever combination of sauces you chose, in whatever quantity you like
Yield: Enough for two people with plenty of leftovers

Source: Inspired by Conestoga cafeteria stirfry station, with tips from my old roommate Christian 

Description:

This is probably my closest conception of food in a general sense. If you told me to go into a kitchen and "make food" with no further guidelines, I would probably make fried rice. Many times I've not been sure what to make for dinner and just decided to throw some stuff together. I'll grab some protein, vegetables, a cup of rice, and throw an egg on it. Then I'll realize what I've done, squeeze some sauce on it and call it fried rice.

Because it's a food that is done so intuitively, it's a little weird for me to write a recipe for it. That's why the portioning in the ingredients is more vague than usual.

I basically lived on this stuff in college. We had a stirfry station where you could request your own vegetables, protein, sauces and choice of rice or noodles, and they'd cook it in front of you. I watched them carefully and decided to try and reverse-engineer it at the place I was staying. I would order it with rice noodles and that's what I initially used in my experiments until I figured out that straight rice is cheaper, so I converted to that. My roommate Christian saw this and said "Are you making fried rice?" I said "No, it's stirfry". That's when he told me to crack an egg in it if I wanted it to be fried rice. I've been living on it ever since.

You can use whatever type of rice you like but our preference is basmati. Originally my favourite sauces were teriyaki and sriracha, and if I wanted to make it even cheaper, I'd substitute the teriyaki for honey garlic, as that was the only sauce I could find that was in a generic name and could be bought in bulk. Awhile back I started using a combination of sesame oil, soy sauce and sriracha. Lee-Anne also likes sweet chili Thai, and hoisin sauce, so we've been experimenting with those too.

You're supposed to prepare the rice a day in advanced and let it chill in the fridge overnight, but honestly I rarely do that. Many people would consider using fresh rice a food crime. You're also supposed to wash the rice by putting it in a colander and rinsing it until the water turns clear. But again, I don't usually make the effort.

To me, fried rice is the perfect cross section of nutrition, affordability, ease of preparation, flavour, and shelf life. You can find food that beats it in every one of those categories, but there's no food that balances all of them quite so well.

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