Egg fried rice with vegetables: yesterday's rice, a screaming-hot wok, twenty-five minutes
A classic leftovers dish, and it works best with exactly that: yesterday's rice. Cold, dried-out grains bounce around the pan and brown; freshly cooked rice steams and clumps into paste. The eggs are fried separately and folded back at the end, the soy sauce goes down the side of the wok, and the sesame oil is added off the heat.
Your own work in that: 25 min.
- Chopping 10 min
- Eggs 5 min
- Frying 10 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneSeparate the rice and chop the rest
Tip the cold rice into a bowl and break the grains apart with wet fingers until not one clump is left. Dice the carrot into 5 mm cubes, chop the garlic, grate the ginger, cut the spring onion into 1 cm pieces, keeping white and green apart. Cut the chicken, if using, into 2 cm cubes.
Ingredients: 600 g rice cooked the day before · 3 pcs eggs · 3 tbsp rapeseed or peanut oil · 250 g chicken breast or prawns
TipThe rice must be <b>from the day before</b>. Overnight in the fridge the grain gives up water and the surface starch firms up; rice like that fries and browns. Freshly cooked rice holds steam inside, which escapes in the pan and boils the rice instead of frying it — hence the paste. If all you have is fresh, spread it thinly on a tray and freeze it for 30 minutes.
Not one clump, grain beside grainFry the eggs and take them out
Beat the eggs with the pepper. Heat a wok or your widest pan over maximum heat, add a spoon of oil and pour in the eggs. Wait 10 seconds for the edges to set, then stir quickly for 30–40 seconds, to soft, still-moist curds. Transfer to a plate.
TipThe eggs come back only at the end. Fried together with the rice they would coat every grain and turn the whole thing into scrambled eggs with rice, rather than rice with egg.
Thirty seconds, soft curds, onto a plateFry the meat and vegetables
Add another spoon of oil to the wok. If you are using chicken or prawns, fry them 3 minutes over high heat and add them to the eggs. Add the carrot and the white parts of the spring onion, fry 2 minutes, then the garlic, ginger and peas and fry 1 minute more, stirring constantly.
Ingredients: 1 pcs carrot · 150 g green peas · 3 cloves garlic · 1 tbsp fresh ginger, grated · 4 pcs spring onion · 3 tbsp soy sauce · 1 tsp toasted sesame oil · 1 tbsp sesame seeds · ½ tsp black pepper
Carrot first, garlic and ginger lastFry the rice in a very hot wok
Push the vegetables aside, add the last spoon of oil and tip in the rice. Spread it across the base and leave it untouched for 30 seconds so the underside browns, only then toss. Repeat four or five times over 4–5 minutes, until the grains are hot, glossy and loose.
TipFry in two batches if your pan is smaller than 30 cm. Six hundred grams of rice in a small pan chills the metal, the rice starts to steam and turns to glue again. Two rounds of three minutes beat one round of ten.
A moment without stirring, then tossSoy sauce, then sesame oil
Pour the soy sauce down the hot side of the wok, not into the middle: touching hot metal it evaporates and caramelises instead of soaking the rice. Toss, add the eggs, the meat and the green parts of the spring onion, turn twice and take the pan off the heat. Only now drizzle with the sesame oil.
TipSesame oil is a seasoning, not a frying fat: it smokes at 175 °C and turns bitter in a hot pan. A teaspoon off the heat gives all the aroma this dish is made for.
Sauce down the side, sesame oil off the heatServe at once
Divide between bowls, scatter with toasted sesame and the rest of the spring onion. Fried rice is eaten immediately, while the grains are still loose; after ten minutes in a bowl its own steam softens it. Chill leftovers quickly, keep them in the fridge for no more than a day and reheat once, in a pan, until piping hot throughout.
Sesame, spring onion, straight to the table
Before you start
Rice in advance
Cook a double batch of rice alongside another dinner, spread it thinly on a tray so it cools within an hour, and refrigerate it straight away in a sealed container; use within 1–2 days. Cooked rice left standing warm encourages Bacillus cereus, whose toxins are not destroyed by reheating. That is fried rice ready in ten minutes.
With kimchi or sauerkraut
A handful of chopped sauerkraut or kimchi thrown in with the carrot: a sharper, deeper flavour, and a version that needs no meat.
With a fried egg on top
Instead of stirring the eggs through, fry four eggs with runny yolks and set one on each bowl. The broken yolk does the work of a sauce.
