Fried Rice
Well, here’s the fried rice recipe that I promised in a week two weeks ago…
Fried rice is nice and versatile because it can usually be thrown together from what’s already around in the refrigerator and the cupboard, and it can be a side dish or the main course. Add some shrimp toward the end– make it shrimp fried rice, and it can be a pretty impressive main course.
This is a good way to use up leftover rice if you made too much for yesterday’s dinner. In this case I cooked rice intending to use it for the fried rice, so I cooked it with low-sodium chicken stock for a little more flavor. If I use leftover rice that was cooked with water, I just adjust the amount of soy sauce I add when frying the rice up.
Since I was making this to go with the smoky BBQed Garlic-Soy Chicken, but cooking it separately on the stovetop, I wanted to add some smoky flavor to the rice, and I didn’t think the bacon would add enough. So I got the idea to add some smoked almonds I had left over from a camping trip. I actually tried to slice them to make slivered almonds, but they mostly just crumbled on me. But the almonds really added a lot to the fried rice– in addition to the smoky taste they added a nice crunch to it. So if you wanted to add smoked almonds, I’d recommend just putting them in a plastic ziplock bag and breaking them up with a mallet, soupcan, whatever you got that can break up almonds but not cause too much damage.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup long-grain rice (I like Basmati).
- 2 Cups Low-Sodium Chicken Stock or Water
- 6 Strips Bacon
- Handful of Diced Green Onion
- 3-4 Cloves Minced Garlic
- 6-8 Mushrooms
- 1/2 of a Sweet Red or Orange Pepper, or 1/2 Carrot, cut into thin strips (mostly for color)
- 1/2 Cup Smoked Almonds, broken up
- 1 Egg
- 1-2 Tbsp. Peanut Oil
- Soy Sauce to taste
- Fine-Ground Black Pepper to taste
Special Utensils:
- Wok or Large Pan
Serves 4
Heat the 2 cups of low-sodium chicken stock or water to boiling, then add the rice, turn heat down to low, and cover. It should be ready in about 20 minutes, just enough time to get the rest of the ingredients ready. A tip if you’re making the rice for the fried rice recipe– use just a little bit less than 2 cups of liquid to the 1 cup of rice. If the rice is a little on the dry side and not mushy at all it will do better in the frying pan.
Heat up the oil in the wok or large pan. Now everything goes fast once the oil is hot…add the bacon and cook until it starts to get crispy. Add the minced garlic and sweet peppers/carrot, and cook until garlic starts to soften up. Add the rice and mix it around in the hot oil. Add mushrooms and keep mixing rice, making sure it doesn’t burn on the bottom of the pan. Add pepper and soy sauce to taste.
Move the rice to make a free area at the bottom and break the egg into it. Mix the egg until it starts to set up, then mix the scrambled egg into the rice. This would be the time to add the shrimp if you were in the mood. Add diced green onion and almonds. Keep cooking and mixing rice until the mushrooms (and shrimp) are cooked, then it’s ready to serve. Enjoy!
