Day-before-grocery-shopping fridge clean-out healthier fried rice at home
Day-before-grocery-shopping fridge clean-out healthier fried rice at home
A mouthful, right? But this TOTALLY cures that Chinese takeout craving, lets you use up veggies and foods that are leftover (which you might just throw out) and is BETTER for you! A win-win-win 🙂
The Rice:
The first time I tried making it at home, I failed fried rice. I used hot rice and dinner was a pile of mush as a result. I learned quickly that fried rice is BEST made with leftover cooked (and cold) rice. Even better if the rice was made with stock or broth (that’s how many Chinese restaurants make it so appealing and golden). However, in the case of me being really busy, I sometimes don’t have any cooked and ready to go. When they go on sale for 4/$5 at my store, I buy the packages of frozen brown rice that’s already cooked and just takes 4 mins to zap in the micro (you can also steam it quickly on the stove top if you don’t have a micro, or throw it into a micro-safe container with a loose lid if you don’t want to use the bag for cooking).
Let the rice cool down for a few minutes – I throw the whole bag in the freezer while prepping the other ingredients.
Get ready – You are stir-frying this whole time and it is very active work – not “sit down a bit and come back” work. But you will be done quickly! This is a super fast meal to cook if you have things ready to go in advance. Chop up all your ingredients…
Meat: Today, I used yesterday’s leftover pork from the two chops I cooked for lunch. I almost always have some leftover pork, chicken, or even pieces of bacon or ham work well (or shrimp, beef, etc.) or go meatless.
Veggies: I usually have a tiny bag of frozen veggies that are lonely – today it was peas. I also had 2 carrots that were oddly shaped that I had to use up. Sometimes I like to throw in some bean sprouts, sugar snap peas, or chopped broccoli–it’s really about whatever you like, and whatever’s leftover.
Eggs (optional) and aromatics:
Grab and egg or two and get them ready (if you like yours scrambled, go ahead and whisk them now and set them aside). I always have some onions and garlic. Regular or green onions or even shallots are great…or use more than one kind.
Once all the stuff is chopped and ready, heat up a large fry pan or wok and add some vegetable or olive oil (if using bacon or fatty meat, skip the oil or just use a tiny bit of it). Let your pan get really hot. Toss in your meat pieces and let them brown a bit. Add your onions veggies, toss around very quickly on the hot pan until they start to release some of their juices
Push away the food and add some more oil — let a small pool of it heat up. Toss in your rice and quickly fold all the other ingredients into it, the rice should be literally “frying” and the veggies will also start to be combined with the rice.
Add the garlic and toss around til it’s fragrant and golden (it’s easy to burn it)! Add a bit more oil (only if you need it)
Push away the food again and toss in your egg(s) and scramble them quickly (if you like them that way). As you scramble, chop the egg up into bits and start folding the egg into the rest of the food. Add a bit of soy sauce to taste – give the entire pile a few more fast stirs, turn the heat off and serve.
You can add more at the table. I try to keep the soy sauce to a minimum during the cooking because it’s easy to just glop a whole lot in and too much sodium is bad for me.
I buy Kikkoman Lower Sodium soy sauce becuase it’s 475 mg per serving and that’s still really high for any food…but I’ve seen soy sauce have as much as 1500 mg per serving!
This made 2 complete meals for me – will make for maybe one meal though, if you are a man, or are having a man over for a meal 🙂
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Jelly of your wok, too.
Nom! I did the same thing with the rice the first time I tried it.
That’s a Calphalon hard adonized steel pan with nonstick coating, but it’s shaped like a wok, Loc T. I use it for anything a frying pan calls for.
Looks like you got the right stove for it. Maybe our next place will have gas stove.
Gas is a deal-breaker for me. One of the few reasons I do not rent downtown. I think it’s like, city fire code, or something, for housing that’s bigger than a triplex to have only electric stoves.
Me too! If the place has electric burners, it’s a no.
My first apartment was electric and so was the 2nd to last…I managed, but I don’t prefer it.
I don’t like not being able to regulate. I have a gas stove and electric oven. I hate the oven. I will use my gas grill before the oven.
I’ve never been in a home with gas. And have cooked maybe once or twice on one. I can see how cooks prefer gas, though, with its flexibility and control.