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Secrets to Cooking the Best Chinese Fried Rice
April 9, 2007 by SteamyKitchen
I'm a food writer, food photographer and cooking teacher specializing in modern Asian. Come visit me at my award-winning website at SteamyKitchen.com.
You can read my weekly Steamy Kitchen food column in the Tampa Tribune newspaper, on ABC7 in Sarasota Florida, cooking once a month live as part of the morning news program and in the East County Observer newspaper in Bradenton Florida
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my husband LOVES fried rice…he always substitutes it for the white rice in restaurants. i have tried to make it but it is never quite right. maybe with your tips i can make a better version, thanks! i like the lap cheong sausage just steamed on top of some jasmine rice!
Thanks for the secrets 🙂
I do not have #2, and #3…so…no best chinese fried rice for me….
I am the same with using whatever veg i have in the crisper. My favourite Chinese fried rice is Charsiu fried rice. I love the sweet flavour of the charsiu.
I am yet to try some lap cheong sausage. My oriental store do keep these in stock so i will get some later this week. I have been meaning to get some in a while now but always forget them.
Mae-I love Charsiu too…I’m looking for a good recipe to make since I can’t buy it fresh where I live.
Cindy- Sometimes when I make white rice in the rice cooker, I throw in a couple of lap cheong links in – it flavors the rice as it cooks.
Tigerfish- I think I remember you are Singaporean….do you use Fish sauce in your cuisine as a regular spice?
I’ve never tried the secrets of fish sauce! Having been born and raised on rice and such, I’ll have to give that a go. One of my favourite versions of fried rice include egg whites, pickled turnip (‘choi bow’ in cantonese), lots of ginger, and finely cut chinese broccoli.
cheers,
Lindsay.
[…] Secrets to Cooking the Best Chinese Fried Rice « Jaden’s Steamy Kitchen (tags: recipes chinese food Cooking recipe) […]
You are SO right about fish sauce and fried rice! That is the key ingredient, and not soy sauce as people commonly use!
[…] but a time, a feeling. Understanding that family members come in all sizes and shapes. Alfie. Fish sauce? Ewwww. Worchestershire Sauce? Yummm. Uhhhh, what’s that you say? Anchovies? Bloody hell. Well, at […]
I just made fried rice for the first time the other day. My friend had been talking about Pineapple Fried Rice for ages. She didn’t really have a recipe, just some guidelines, so I had no idea how it would turn out. Delish!
I didn’t have day old rice, I spread it on a sheet and then put in a warm oven for a few minutes to dry it out a little. Worked really well.
Here’s the recipe I came up with, based on my friend’s recommendations:
http://sseichinger.blogspot.com/2007/04/fruity-fried-rice.html
Thanks for helping to demystify fried rice!
Just found your site via Slashfood. Love it!
Fried rice is probably the dish I cook the most, and my stand-by ingredients (due to the ease which with they can be found in any supermarket) are scallions, egg, and deli ham. I make my rice fresh, and I do not measure the water other than to have the water level about one fingernail depth above the rice (in a rice cooker). I add the egg at the end, just before seasoning, so that every grain of rice is coated with a little egg. I season with salt, MSG (the most direct way to add umami!), and white pepper. I will sometimes use ketchup as well, rather than salt and MSG.
Steve- I love ketchup in my fried rice too! It sounds so weird, but it works. There was a Vietnamese restaurant in L.A. that I used to go to and order only 2 things on their menu: teeny tiny 1/2″ snails in some creamy broth and fried rice with ketchup.
I finally made it to the international market and was pleased to find the Three Crabs fish sauce and several varieties of lap xuong (they all seemed to be labeled with the Vietnamese spelling). I always have some jasmine rice leftover (this time from making a Thai red curry) so I’ll be dining in style tonight.
Hey Grebby, very happy that you found the ingredients! Let me know how it turned out.
I find that the secret to fried rice is sesame seeds, it adds a slightly more savoury edge to it, and when the rice is topped with soy sauce the seeds are amazing.
– I have yet to try the chinese sausage yet. What meat is it?
I use a concentrated fish sauce made by bart spices, I think an english brand, its very much tea coloured, and its very strong so a little goes a long way, I bought it 6 months ago and haven’t finished it!!!
GuyJ- I love sesame seeds too, esp toasted black sesame seeds! Adds texture and great color.
Chinese sausage is mostly pork. There are some other varieties as well that include some duck liver.
Haven’t seen the Bart Spices fish sauce…will have to google that!
The product can be found here:
http://www.bartspices.com/product.aspx?product_id=125
They do a lot of thai spices and some indian aswell.
They have a lot of great products – love the freeze dried herbs (process keeps it very fresh and it is the next best thing to the freshly picked). Also like that they have a ton of organic products.
[…] Mar 8th, 2007 by SteamyKitchen Here is my recipe for Crab Fried Rice. I did write another post on fried rice with some similar material and goes a little more in-depth, its a must read The Secrets to the Best Chinese Fried Rice. […]
[…] on Fried Rice & Fish Sauce (wouldn’t that make an awesome rock band […]
Me & my brother are fried rice crazy. Can you recommend a good, non pork, sausage substitute? Thanks!
Hi Andy-
You can use any type of sausage, really. Today, I made chicken sausage fried rice. Since chicken has very low fat, no need to “render” the fat.
1. fry sausage until 80% done. remove.
2. fry all the other ingredients
3. add sausage back, fry until sausage is done
4. add rice and seasonings
Good luck, let me know how it turns out.
I am from India, I dont have most of the things required, and I am a veg, What do I do???
[…] The Secrets to the Best Chinese Fried Rice […]
I am a huge fried rice enthusiast. I have read so many recipes and cooked fried rice at least a hundred times or more, lol. I could never get it to taste like the chinese restaurants though. One day, I decided to buy an outdoor propane burner that goes to 65,000 BTU’s, which is very hot. I have to tell you, my fried rice has never tasted the same. The key is to cook rice fast and hot. In only 2 to 5 minutes tops. You also need a wok that is blackened (seasoned) with a nice patina in it. These two things combined allows you to get that elusive wok hey flavor.
Trust me, you will not get authentic quality fried rice without these two things! The ingredients you use are secondary to these two things.
One other thing. You must have day old cold rice. This allows much of the moisture to escape from the rice and for the rice to harden ever so slightly so that when you cook it, all of the grains separate perfectly. Basically, when you pick the rice up in your hands, every grain should fall off from your hands as you put it back into the bowl. If none of the rice sticks to your hands then it is a good consistency for frying.
Chinese take out only usually have fried rice with the yellow color rice onions and pork but its enough to give the aroma that all of us are looking for. The best fried rice comes from your sitdown chinese restaurant the kind that have waiters and at least two drivers for delivery. Oh…i forget to mention animal fat burns at a higher temperature than your regular soy based vegetable oil. Peanut oil is way too expensive and allergies associated with peanut they really don’t bother too much with that. So what is that aroma that drives us all crazy when it comes to authentic chinese fried rice? Let your thick pan build up the heat without oil is key. The WuTang technique is to put your diced onion in a bowl and massage that with oil and a little salt. Drop your onions to the hot pan. If you don’t hear sizzling or see smoke your pan is not hot enough or not thick enough to store that kenetic BTU energy. The onions will smoke but not stick to the pan as well as caramelization the sugar content of onions begins to form and thus we now have “UMAMI” the old fashion way. We didn’t use MSG yet. Don’t stir too much. Let the onions smoke and caramelized but not sweaty otherwise you will loose the succulency meaning that crispy juicy noisy rhythm you get when you bit into it such as our uncooked bean sprouts. Then put your leftover rice that you massage with both hands so the rice is separated. Put that in your wok or thick pan. This is how far anyone can get cooking at home. The taste and the aroma comes from all the different food that they make and the different “Umami” that comes from all different vegetables and meat collagen that sticks to their wok.