musings, mutterings, and creative muddle. . .





Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Fried Rice - Fantastic Fried Rice

Fried Rice.  Fabulous, tasty, versatile, easy Fried Rice.  Just isn't anything else to say except this is one of Son-o's favorite recipes.  He's always ready to help with the prep of this one. . . and a second set of hands makes this easy recipe even snappier.  Team-cooking is F-U-N!

Fantastic Fried Rice
2 cups long-grain white rice
4 cups water
3 Tbsp olive oil, divided
5 eggs, beaten
1/4 tsp black ground pepper
6 oz crumbled bacon
1-1/2 cups frozen peas, thawed
1 cup finely diced or shredded carrots
3 green onions, chopped
1/4 cup soy sauce

Bring water to boil in saucepan, add rice.  Return to boil, reduce heat, cover.  Simmer for 20 minutes or until rice is done, but firm.  Drain any remaining water.  Meanwhile, in a large frying pan, heat 1 Tbsp olive oil, add beaten eggs, season with black pepper.  Cook and stir eggs over medium-high heat until cooked through.  Add bacon, peas, carrots, and green onions and mix thoroughly, move to one side of pan.  Put remaining olive oil in pan and heat over medium-high. Combine rice with other ingredients (right in pan if you have room).  Dribble soy sauce over entire mixture and stir in.  Let rice cook until bottom of mixture gets golden-brown and crisp, stir bottom rice mixture to top and repeat.  Continue to cook rice, stirring infrequently, adding additional soy sauce if desired, until rice is heated thoroughly.

This recipe makes 8 servings and will take about 30 minutes from start to finish.  I sometimes will fry my own bacon, but found that a small bag of pre-cooked bacon crumbles tastes just as good, isn't as greasy, and cuts calories.  To make this a one-bowl meal, you can add 2 cups cooked shrimp, diced chicken, pork, or beef, if desired.   To reheat, re-fry with a bit of olive oil in a pan for best results, but a minute or two on high in the microwave also works. 

We like to 'spice things up' with sweet and sour sauce and hot mustard.  We make our own hot mustard sauce too - and it gets hot-hot.  PERFECT!

Hot Chinese Mustard Sauce

1/4 cup Hot Mustard Powder
1/4 cup boiling water
2 Tbsp Vegetable Oil
1/2 tsp. salt

Combine all ingredients and let stand until cool.  Mustard gets 'spicier' as it cools.  Refrigerate any leftovers.

Tasty stuff, I'm telling you - YUM!

Last evening Son-o and I ventured into the 'experiment in the kitchen' realm and made homemade crab rangoon for the first time.  Came out pretty well with store-bought won-ton wraps, some shredded seafood, neufschatel, and a couple things.  They were quite tasty - BUT, not quite it, if you know what I mean.   You can count on us to keep tweaking until it meets our finicky standards.   I did like the hint of making them in a mini-muffin pan and baking instead of frying them.  Sure minimized preparation time and oily calories.  We're all for this!  I'll keep you posted on our progress.

Have a Fabulous Fried Rice kind of day ~

Robin Z

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