Rice, Eggs, Garlic and Fish Sauce. And a bit of oil. And with that, you can make great fried rice. Credit goes to Chef Xi Hong of the At-Sunrice Global Chef Academy who taught me the wonders of Yang Chow Fried Rice. Here, I have trimmed the recipe down to the barest essentials, so that all that is left is the technique, as carried out in a home kitchen.

Fried rice at, its simplest, is just rice and eggs. Simple ingredients fried up to perfection with that elusive aroma we call “wok hei” – the charred, heavenly fragrance that results when food is fried at high heat.

Master this basic recipe, and you will have an excellent base from which to experiment with endless variations of fried rice. You then can add crab meat, wagyu beef, caviar, prawns (and yes, bacon!) – just about whatever you want, and your friends will find that your fried rice is special. It has that wonderful aroma.

This post is about fried rice as simple as I dare make it, with no fancy ingredients to distract from the technique.

Ingredients (for two)

1. Steamed jasmine (or other long grain) rice, ideally cooked the day before and chilled in fridge
2. 3  regular eggs (65 g), or 2 jumbo ones
3. 2 tablespoons fish sauce
4. 1 clove garlic, minced.
5. About 250 ml of cooking oil

For me, rice for two is cooked from one rice cup (180ml) of raw rice

Equipment 

1. A large wok and ladle
2. A metal sieve, set over matching metal bowl

Prep and Mise

It really helps if you use your hands to break up the rice, trying your best to loosen up the lumps. Wet hands will reduce sticking.

Beat up the eggs, and add a teaspoon of fish sauce into them.

Mince garlic.

Heat up the oil in a wok. Set up the sieve and bowl. You are now mise en place!

Cook! 

Take a deep breath, and reread the prep instructions once again. Ensure you have everything ready.

There are two distinct steps in the cook stage – first you fry the egg in lots of oil, then you fry the rice.

Frying the egg – the oil is hot enough when a wooden spatula, or chopstick bubbles when dipped in the oil.

To be more precise, the temperature, as measured on a gun thermometer, is about 140 degrees Celsius. At this stage, the oil shimmers a bit, but is not smoking.

You next need to fry about half of the beaten egg in the hot oil.

You will need to stir quite quickly, but gently  – the egg should immediately bubble up. Try to swirl the egg around so that you get nice, delicate wisps of fried egg.

As soon as the egg is fully set, grab the wok, and carefully pour the entire contents of the pan – egg and hot oil, onto the sieve

Allow the oil to drain into bowl below – it can be reused. For now, scoop about two tablespoons of oil back into the wok.

Its time to actually fry rice. On medium low heat, sauté the garlic till fragrant. Do not allow it to burn.

Follow quickly with the rice..

Toss up and mix rapidly so that the garlic is taken off the bottom of the pan and does not burn.

Still keeping the heat low, press on the rice, doing your best to break it up into individual grains. The ideal fried rice has totally no lumps.

Once, the rice is broken up, you can turn up the heat. Toss around a bit, and then pile the rice  up. Over this pile, you pour the reminder of the beaten egg, being careful to spread the egg evenly.

What you need to do, is to get every grain of rice coated in egg, so that all rice is uniformly yellow. The heat is high at this point, so work quickly. Stir and toss vigourously.

I can’t emphasise this enough – the heat has to be high. You need to stir stir stir or toss toss toss! Ideally, when you pause, you should see grains of rice “dancing” on the hot wok.

Once the egg is evenly distributed, you can toss in the fried egg you prepared earlier

Give things a final toss or stir, and in goes the fish sauce. When you do this, a wonderful aroma should rise like magic from the wok. If not, you didn’t turn the heat up enough.

Stir, check seasoning, and you are done!

From here, you have the best of a dozen wonderful fried rice dishes.

Take it from me – keep working on this. Cook this, again and again, till you get good fried rice with just these 4 ingredients, and fried rice will never be the same again.

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Variants :

Conpoy Fried Rice : addition of some dried scallop for a luxurious touch!

Notes: 

Food safety – there are some risks associated with leftover rice. You make your own call. For me, I set the rice aside as soon as it is cooked, cover it with a clean towel to cool, and then fridge it soon after. Do not leave rice sitting around for hours before placing in the fridge.

When I know the rice is for frying, I try to cook with less water, then cool it fast, and fridge it overnight. I suppose that in the fridge some of rice starch retrogrades, making the grains harder, drier, more distinct and thus suited for frying. If you can’t manage that, cook the rice with less water, and spread the hot, cooked rice onto a tray to cool completely before frying.