robot_parade

I made vegetable fried rice for dinner, and it was good. Here's my method:

1/4 cup sesame seeds

3 tbs canola or peanut oil

2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 tsp fresh ginger

Veggies. For instance:
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium zucchini, chopped
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1/4 cup frozen peas

If you don't have, or don't like, any of the veggies above, leave them out. Or add something. Like mushrooms. Mushrooms would be nice.

1 tbs butter.

4 cups cold, cooked white rice
Start with about 2 cups of dry rice, and prepare according to the directions, along with a heavy pinch of salt. Put it in a bowl in the fridge until it's cold to the touch.
2 eggs - once the rice is cold, break the eggs over it, and stir until combined.

Sauce:
1/3 cup soy sauce (or as much as 1/2 cup, if you really like soy sauce)
A pinch of ground ginger
1/2 tsp fish sauce
1 tsp roasted sesame oil


1. Get everything ready, including. You won't have time to go digging for an ingredient or measure anything once cooking starts. Everything should be grouped in bowls as described above.

2. Get out your wok, and put it over the highest heat your stove can produce.

2b. Put out the fire that starts in your burner because you spilled something in there the other day. Well, you may not have to do this step, but I did tonight, so I included it.

3. Once the wok is very hot, but before it starts to smoke, toss in the sesame seeds. From now on, the wok, and everything in it, should be in almost constant motion. Depending on how much heat your stove can put out, things can burn very quickly.

4. After the sesame seeds have been in for a few seconds (like, less than 5), add the oil, garlic and ginger, and vegetables in quick succession, keeping everything moving.

5. After the vegetables have cooked for about a minute, add the butter and the rice/egg mixture. The rice must be cold. If it isn't, it will break apart and turn mushy instead of being individual grains of rice.

6. Keep the wok moving, and stir with a spatula or spoon, keeping everything in motion, until the rice and vegetables start to turn a little brown in spots. Again, very dependent upon how much heat your stove puts out, but this usually takes about 3 minutes for me. If you get a little bit of crusty egg/rice/vegetable fond on the bottom of the wok, do not fear, just scrape it off with your spatula.

7. Add the sauce, and stir fry for about one more minute.

8. Serve and eat.

The goal is to get the rice just barely charred, and nothing burnt. If you burn any of the ingredients, toss it out and try again. It's especially easy to burn the sesame seeds, oil, and the ginger/garlic by letting the pan get too hot.

I mix the rice and egg together because it spreads the egg more evenly over the rice, and you don't have those biggish bits of egg. some people just add the rice, and then the egg, and stir it together. Up to you.

Did I mention the rice must be cold? This is really the most important part.

Cynthetiq

sounds tasty!

rice will be best if it's yesterday's rice from the fridge...

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robot_parade

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that yesterday's rice works great, just make sure it was covered well and isn't all dried out and crunchy. I made that mistake once and it was nasty. :-)