Fried Rice Paradise

YAY! IT’S FRIDAY! (or more accurately, the wee hours of Saturday). It’s been a long, long week, and boy! am I glad to see the weekend. When I got home at 9.30pm tonight, tired and starving, I found freshly cooked fried rice waiting for me! Waaw..wow! Plus, I had a choice of not one, but two types of fried rice! Double waaw..wow! Ah! The luxury of choice.

I luurve fried rice. It’s such a versatile dish. I can add almost anything to it. And just by changing one or two, or even all the accompanying ingredients, the taste of the dish changes and evolve. It’s pretty much a “one dish meal”… it has vegetables, meat, egg and rice all in one dish. It’s easy to cook… and uses just one wok/pan, so there’s minimal clean-up (rather important factor for a tired cook) It’s bright, colorful and tasty!

Whilst a simple dish, there are actually many, many different methods of cooking it. I personally don’t think there is one method that is more “correct” than another, or better than another. It’s pretty much down to the chef’s preference and style.

Fried rice connoisseurs will probably say that the dish can only be cooked with leftover, overnight rice, which has less moisture than freshly cooked rice. And on the whole, I would agree with this. After all, the dish itself evolved from cooks wanting a way to utilize leftover rice, and so threw in some fresh meat and vegetables (or even leftover meat and vegetables) to create a brand new, freshly cooked meal. However, we make fried rice using freshly cooked rice all the time (simply because we never have enough leftover rice to use), and the dish still tastes great.

Some people would say that if planning to fry freshly cooked rice, it would be best to add a little salt to the water in which the raw rice is cooked, so that it produces a “dryer”, less soft grain, or, to air the rice after it is cooked and before frying it, to dry it out a little. Again, I understand the basis of these tips, and they probably work well, but I’ve never used them, and I don't think it has affected the taste of our home-cooked fried rice. So, I guess it is all about experimenting until you find the method, tastes and textures you are happiest with.

One thing I do find missing in home-cooked fried rice though is the “wok-hei”, that all important, but rather elusive element. Literally translated from Cantonese, it means “energy of the wok”. It’s that extra fragrance and aroma that the rice has when cooked with extremely high heat and intense flame, which can only be achieved with industrial hobs of restaurants. Then again, not all restaurant-served fried rice has wok-hei. It’s all down to the skill of the chef.

One of my favorite versions of fried rice is the salmon fried rice – using hoisin-marinated salmon, with carrots, cucumber, egg, black olives, and sometimes a tiny bit of lemon zest. I find the olives complement the salmon rather well, and give a sort of Mediterranean feel to the dish. I normally use dried black olives, very, very finely minced. The lemon rind adds a refreshing and tangy counter-balance to the olives and salmon. I prefer Japanese cucumbers for more crunch, but all types work just as well. Or, it can be substituted with diced long beans, green peas or anything that's green!

The way I cook fried rice, is the way my mum cooks fried rice. Each ingredient is sautéed separately, before being brought together with the rice at the end. The salmon is diced and marinated in hoisin sauce, and then sautéed with garlic and shallots (please see next post for recipe). The minced olives are also sautéed with some garlic. The diced carrots are just sautéed in a little oil to soften and cook. I like to leave the cucumbers raw and crunchy. The eggs (2-5, depending on amount of rice and how much egg you like in the rice) are lightly beaten and seasoned with light soy sauce, salt, sugar and pepper.

Finally, to bring all the ingredients together: fry some minced garlic in hot oil, and add the eggs. Just as the eggs begin to solidify, add the cooked rice, and stir-fry. I personally like to see the eggs in my fried rice, so I like the eggs to be in small pieces throughout the rice, which this method will produce. Others prefer the eggs to “disappear” into the rice – i.e. the eggs coat each grain of rice and are not seen. In this case, the rice would have to be mixed with and be evenly coated by the eggs before being added to the garlic.

The rice would probably need to be sautéed for a good 10 minutes or longer, depending on the strength of the flame. I’ve been told that the gauge for doneness of the rice is when the grains of rice start “jumping” and doing a merry dance in the wok. I’ve never achieved this, probably for a couple of reasons: 1) we normally cook large batches of fried rice (enough to feed probably 10 people), as opposed to the individual portions cooked in restaurants, and with that much rice in the wok, there just ain’t enough space for them rice grains to start doing the jiggle wiggle, you know what I’m saying? 2) it requires intense heat and high flame (the wok-hei again) to achieve this rice dance performance, either that or one has to stand over the rice and fry them for a good ½ hour or more to achieve it. And frankly, I’m too lazy to do that. And hey, I still think (and so does my family) that the fried rice hasn’t suffered too much from the dance deprivation! But I digress…

Once the rice is “ready”, add the seasonings. The standard would be salt and pepper. Or alternatively, fish sauce is tasty too. Finally, add all the other pre-prepared ingredients (fish, vegetables) and sauté to mix. Ta-da… done!

The other version of fried rice that was cooked tonight, and which I haven’t actually had in a looong time, was cooked with luncheon meat, corn kernels, olive, carrots, coriander (or parsley) and eggs. Yum! The diced luncheon meat was sautéed till brown and crispy. The olives and carrots were sautéed as above. And the rice fried in the same way, before adding all the ingredients.

Other versions of fried rice which I really like:
- with prawns
- with salted fish
- with Chinese sausages “lap cheong” (I think Italian Chorizo would work fantastically too)
- with Yunnan ham or any other type of ham and pineapple (yes, pineapple)
- with a sunny-side-up fried egg on top, so that when I break the runny yolk, it cascades over the rice!
- all versions fried with sambal chili

It's all about balancing tastes, colors and textures. Fried rice is just a great dish for letting your taste-desires, creativity and instincts lead you… on a magical mystery taste tour!

Happy rice frying!

Copyright © 2003 Renee Kho. All rights reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, distribute or display any of the images and text contained in this article.