We don’t normally eat “make it at home” Chinese food because it is simply never as good as the Chinese restaurant stuff. (Must be all that MSG? haha)
Regardless, I periodically want to try another recipe. This time I decided to try fried rice…it seemed pretty basic, so I thought it might come out a little better than our previous attempts at “Chinese at home”.
This recipe is phenomenal. The key really is cold rice, just as Joelen remarks on her page. I made the rice 2 days in advance and kept it in the fridge. I also made real ‘rice cooker’ rice, although I’m not sure if it would matter or if you could just cook up a package of minute rice. 🙂
I also cooked off my chicken (I just put it in foil packets with salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder and baked at 375 for 45 minutes) and cubed it in advance. This meant the meal took me a whopping 15 minutes to put together on the evening we ate it.
Awesome. 🙂
Final thought: I doubled the recipe when we made it (original measurements are below) — it served two of us dinner, and easily two lunches, with that amount as an entree. I didn’t serve anything with it, but egg rolls would be delicious!
Try this soon! We’ll be adding it to our rotation meals, and I’m dying to try it with pork, shrimp, etc!
Fried Rice
(Joelen’s Culinary Adventures)
1 cup leftover meats – pork, chicken, beef, seafood
1-2 eggs
3-4 cloves minced garlic
1/2 onion finely diced
3-4 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup chopped vegetables (fresh or frozen) — Add whatever your family will eat. I added frozen peas/carrots mixture this time, but next time I’ll DEFINITELY add sugar snap peas and some of those mini corn cobs
salt & pepper to taste
1/2 tablespoon onion powder
1/2 tablespoon garlic powder
1-2 tablespoons light or dark soy sauce
1-2 cups prepared rice, cold
Directions
– In a hot skillet or wok, heat oil (I used a large ‘chicken cooker’ with sides, as I don’t own a wok)
– Add garlic and onions & stir, then add leftover meats of your choice, chopped up in bite sized pieces
– Stir fry meats until you get them a bit crispy, then push the meats aside and crack eggs into the pan
– Scramble the eggs into the pan until cooked
– Add cold rice over the eggs & meat into the pan, making sure to crumble it in your fingers. (Dumping a large chunk of rice is not going to work here. You need to crumble it so it separates nicely)
– Add salt, pepper, onion & garlic powders and soy sauce; toss
– Allow the rice to heat up and absorb the spices and soy sauce, tossing to help it along
– Add the fresh or frozen veggies and toss into the rice
– Continue cooking it all on high heat until rice is heated through and veggies are cooked
