Guilty Pleasure: Fried Rice

I have very few guilty pleasures in my life. If I were making a list, though, fried rice would be right up at the top.

Sunday, Ann and I were discussing shrimp around noon as an idea of what to have for dinner without ever concluding anything before we took a nap. After awaking, I started prepping vegetables from the refrigerator.

Seeing me working, Ann asked what I was making for dinner. When I said shrimp fried rice, she thought that she had told me earlier in the day that she wanted shrimp fried rice. But she only thought it, never saying it out loud. I guess we were on the same wavelength!

Broccoli Stem, Carrot, Red Onion, and Chive Fried Rice

There are precious few shrimp in the dish above. Duh! I forgot to prep the shrimp. Oh well, we didn't need them anyway.

Fried rice is one of the great clean out the refrigerator dishes. Leftover bits and pieces of lots of things can find a home in fried rice. Use whatever you have at hand, but avoid wet ingredients that will turn your rice into mush. I found a half a red onion, a carrot, and the stems from about five heads of broccoli.

Broccoli stems are a great treasure in the kitchen and I have never understood why people pay top dollar for them only to pitch them in the trash. Use a paring knife to pull the skin off all the way around the stems and dice the sweet, crunchy interiors as you would any other vegetable. They are wonderful raw and lightly cooked, having a sweet flavor something like kohlrabi.

Peeling broccoli stems is a good down-time activity. I sat out on the back patio with a bowl of stems and a paring knife and peeled the stems while chatting with Ann. this makes me recall that I used to go to a Chinese restaurant where mid-afternoon, the entire crew would sit around tables with bus tubs of broccoli stems to peel, chatting away, and waiting for the dinner rush.

Prepped Vegetables Ready to Cook

As I was at the stove making the fried rice, I couldn't help but chuckle as I remembered overhearing a conversation in the restaurant between a line cook and his mom:

"Seriously, Mom! A recipe? For fried rice? The recipe is in the name: fry some rice!"

Cooking the Vegetables with Ginger and Garlic

Well, there's slightly more to it than that, but not much. Fried rice, when really well made is a wonderful thing: too bad so many restaurants make such terrible fried rice.

Fried Rice Tips

Rice. Use cold, leftover medium to long grain rice for fried rice. Cold rice doesn't clump as much as hot rice and is easier to break into grains if necessary. If you don't have leftover rice, don't sweat it. We don't ever have leftover rice at our house because of portion control. We would pig out on rice if we had it around, so we only make what we need. For this fried rice, I cooked it an hour before needing it, spread it out on a sheet tray to cool, and popped it into the fridge. Done.

To Egg or Not to Egg. A lot of fried rice contains egg. I do and I don't. Last night, because I forgot the shrimp, I added two eggs for a bit more protein. There are several ways to add eggs to fried rice and I do them all from time to time:

• You can cook the egg beforehand into a really thin crepe-like omelet, dice the omelet, and add it as a garnish to the rice. 

• While the rice is frying, you can crack one or more eggs into the rice, then stir fry them along with the rice. This leaves streaks of white and streaks of gold.

• While the rice is frying, you can add beaten eggs to the rice. This gives a more uniform dispersion of gold. Last night, I beat the eggs, added a 1/2 cup of fresh chives from the garden, and a slug of soy sauce. Then I added this mix to the rice at the very end.

Seasoning the Oil. Traditionally, you would season the oil in the wok by frying garlic and ginger slices until golden, then removing and discarding it, before cooking the rest of the dish. I like a stronger flavor of ginger and garlic, so I add both, finely minced, when I am cooking the vegetables. Because I don't have a wok and I don't have particularly high heat, I'm not worried about the ginger and garlic burning.

There is also another way, a non-standard one that I learned from a Thai chef in making khao pad, Thai-style fried rice, which at the time was the best fried rice I had ever eaten. He created a special curry paste of shallots, cilantro stems and roots, green chiles, galanga, and white pepper. Then he would fry a spoonful of this fiery paste in his wok before starting the dish: absolutely fragrantly mind-blowing. I do this from time to time by dropping all the ingredients into the Vita-Mix with enough oil to emulsify. Granted, I get better results by banging this out in my big green granite mortar from Thailand, but I am not cooking in a Thai restaurant, or any restaurant.

No Wok, No Fear. Fried rice is best when you get a great sear on the rice, something that is hard to do without a wok. I don't have a wok and I don't have ventilation worth a darn either, so I have to do things a bit differently at home. I build my fried rice in stages. First I cook the longest cooking items: the vegetables and proteins, in a couple of batches, adding them to a big bowl when done. Then I cook the rice, perhaps in batches, adding it to the bowl. When I'm done, I mix it all together and serve. The point is to not overload the pan so that it stays hot.

Seasoning. At the end of cooking, it is typical to add a splash of soy or fish sauce to season the rice. I like only a little in my rice, preferring to let guests season their own bowls at the table. I use soy sauce when I'm in a Chinese or Korean mood, fish sauce when I'm in a Southeast Asian mood. In this case, I mixed the soy sauce directly into the egg mixture.

Ideas. Use sesame oil or a mix of a neutral oil with sesame oil for a twist. Spicy: curry paste, white pepper, green chiles, kimchee, gochujang. Herbs for last minute addition: chives, garlic chives, Chinese chives, green onions, Thai basil, cilantro, kaffir lime leaves. Proteins: egg, shrimp, tofu, pressed spiced tofu, seitan, ham, lop cheung (Chinese sausage), roast pork, roast duck, roast chicken. Vegetables: broccoli stems, gai lan (Chinese broccoli), turnip, radish, kohlrabi, rutabaga, baby corn, corn kernels, carrots, peas, sugar snaps, snow peas. Other: shiitake mushrooms, tree ear mushrooms, pickled mustard stems, peanuts, cashews, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds. Use your imagination but keep it simple so as not to overload the dish. Pick a protein, something green, and one or two items for contrast.