Egg Fried Rice

Now pretty much everyone I know loves a good Chinese takeaway. And pretty much every Chinese takeaway lover I know loves a good helping of egg fried rice.

It's once of those foods that is always tasty, really filling and fantastically satisfying. It can also be eaten with a variety of foods.

This is the first of a two-part post to show you how to make my favourite Chinese takeaway dish. From scratch.

Now before you start, keep this in mind. Egg fried rice is made with rice that has been cooked, and left in a fridge over night. It's a quick meal to make, but keep in mind that you'll have to start the day before.

Most of this recipe has been directly taken from one Gok Wan did, featured on his cookery show.

You can find his original recipe here, but I'll give you the fully photographed version.

Start by pouring the desired amount of rice into a stock pot. You need to have a pot with a tight-fitting lid. As for measuring the rice, I normally do two handfuls per person. If this makes more than is needed, it just means you've got some left over.

You'll need:

Rice

Eggs

Peas

Toasted sesame/groundnut oil

Soy sauce

Fish sauce

Fill the stock pot with water. You'll need quite a lot for this stage.

You see how the water is quite cloudy at the moment? That's because it's full of starch from the rice. We want to get rid of this. What we'll be left with is a fluffier rice grain once cooked that won't stick to the pan, or the other grains as much.

You can do this by rubbing the grains between your hands in the water. When the water becomes really cloudy, drain it and repeat the process.

Do this three or four times until the water is clear.

Drain the rice again, and flatten down with your fingers, as demonstrated below.

Here's a cool trick I learned from Gok's TV show - It doesn't matter what size your pan is, or how much rice you've got, the water level needs to be 2cm above the rice in the pan. There's an easy way of testing this.

As it turns out, the first knuckle crease in your middle finger (assuming you're an adult) should be about 2cm from your fingertip. So politely flip your stockpot the bird and do what you can to make sure the water level is no higher or lower than 2cm.

Once the rice has been washed, and you've got enough water in the pan, place it on a hot hob.

You need to bring the water to the boil. This can take around 15 minutes. Once it's boiling, keep it on a high heat and keep it bubbling.

This needs to boil away until bubbles form on the surface on the rice. This has been pretty difficult to photograph due to the amount of steam, but you'll see what I mean.

           Hopefully that's a better picture! Once bubbles are on the surface of the rice, whack the pot's lid on, and reduce the heat to a low simmer.

Leave this to work for 10 minutes.

As Gok Wan said - Foolproof Rice!

Remove the lid from the pan after 10 minutes, let the steam escape and take a look. If it needs a little longer, raise the heat ever so slightly and keep the rice moving with a wooden spoon until there is less water in there.

Remove the heat. Fluff the rice with the spoon and let it steam dry.

What you'll be left with is just plain rice, but the texture will be lovely, and it's good enough to eat with anything you want on it. But we've still got to turn this into egg fried rice.

Stick the rice in a bowl, and keep in the fridge until you need it. Okay, it doesn't have to be overnight, but I'd keep it in there for a minimum of four hours. The longer the better, though, to be honest. This gives the rice time to dry, and will fry much better this way.

So the rice has dried out in the fridge, it's time to turn this into a takeaway classic.

Start by pouring some oil into a wok. Ideally a nutty oil, such as groundnut, or my preference, toasted sesame oil. This is perfect for Chinese cooking.

The rest of this dish requires very quick work. Please keep this in mind, and read through this post a few times to get an idea of what needs to be done.

Heat the oil in the wok. Grab some eggs, for two people, use three eggs. For three, use five, for four people use six if you can.

Crack the eggs into the hot wok and scramble them with a wooden spoon or spatula.

Keeping up with the quick work here, scoop as much rice as you need into the wok. You want to do this before the eggs cook through. This will mean that the eggs will slightly coat some of the rice.

Give this a good mix around with your preferred utensil. Add a little more oil if you need it, but try not to add too much, you don't want oily egg fried rice.

Keep the rice moving, you don't want it to burn, but you do want it to cook all the way through.

At this point you can add the classic ingredient to go with this - a generous helping of peas

Give this a good mix in too, and keep moving it in a stir-fry style.

At this stage we can start adding flavours to it. Drizzle in some soy sauce, and about two teaspoons of fish sauce. This will give this a Chinese flavour.

Give this another stir fry, keep it moving.

Give it a taste, and see if you're happy with the flavours. If not, add what you feel is appropriate, and if it tastes absolutely perfect, serve it up!

This will go amazingly with the other authentic Chinese dish that I'm posting on this blog, to find out how to make it, click here.