I absolutely love Asian food and have been making some of my own, in the event I cant find a good place to order out from. I've made some great sesame noodles, General Tso's Chicken, Sesame Chicken, Lumpia and one of my favorites, Fried Rice. This is something I make all the time because the ingredients are usually things that I always have on hand, and it is also a recipe that you can play around with. If you have left over rice, chicken, pork, shrimp you can just throw it in!
It took me about 5 hours to make fried rice today. Don't be alarmed, I was in no rush. I have found it much less stressful to prep and cook randomly through the morning/afternoon, rather than cook a meal in an hour while I'm starving and annoyed because I have a child who is not cooperating and dogs that are going nuts.
Fried Rice
This is what we are working with.
3 cups of cooked rice
1/3 cup soy sauce
2 T Sesame oil
2-3 carrots diced
1/2 onion
1/2 stick of butter
1 cup frozen peas
2 eggs scrambled
salt and pepper to taste
Around 10 this morning I made the rice and just let it sit out on the stove, until I got around to pulling the rest of the fried rice together. I suppose you could refrigerate it, but I wasn't feeling that adventurous.
EJ went down for a nap around noon and I decided to give my mom a call. While I was chatting with her I peeled and chopped the carrots and diced the onion. I love carrots and onion, so while I wrote 1/2 an onion above, I used a whole one. Again, this is super simple so tailor it to your taste. If you hate onion leave it out. I also like to add a couple cloves of minced garlic but our call ended and I had other things I wanted to do while she was napping so I left it out. Its all about balance, people.
I threw my diced vegetables into my dutch oven and covered them until I was ready to start making my rice.
I was able to get in a short workout and a shower, they were both much needed. Yesterday was a "me" day where during naps I did nothing but lay on the couch, watch Lifetime and stuff my face with copious amounts of cheese. I caught EJ's cold and nobody was here to baby me except for the block of parmesan that was in my fridge. We've all been there....right?
After EJ woke up, she was in a fabulous mood so I figured it was my chance to finish my rice. I threw half the butter into the veggies and set the burner to medium and let them cook, while I scrambled and cooked two eggs. Once the veggies were done, I like them soft but with a little bit of a bite, I added a cup of frozen peas. Now, I LOVE peas so a cup might be a bit overboard. I don't care, peas make the world go round... or something like that. After a few minutes and they start looking less frozen and a little plump, I add my rice and butter and stir everything together. Once everything is combined, I will add my soy sauce and sesame oil. Now, you don't necessarily need the sesame oil but it adds such a delicious scent and flavor to the rice.
This was EJ's breaking point. She had been entertaining herself for far too long (roughly 15 minutes) and it was time to demand my attention. Thankfully, for dinners sake, I was done!
"Pick me up damn it"
Now that everything is combined and your rice is nice and hot, give it a taste (you can do this with a child on your hip) and add a little salt and pepper if needed. Soy can be a bit salty but there is a lot of rice to soak it up, so I always find that I need some salt and some pepper. I also like to add some chopped green onions at this point but I'm lazy and didn't feel like making a trip to the store.
Ricey-goodness come to Momma!!
EJ ate some and Mr. P and I polished off the rest. I'm kind of disappointed there are no leftovers.
Note to self: Next time double the recipe.
Again, this recipe can be tweaked to your liking. If you want to add some diced chicken, try cooking the rice in chicken stock for some added flavor. Get carbie crazy my friends!
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