120. Bacon fried rice - Recipe

Bacon fried rice

Fried rice is so easy to make. If you can fry an egg, you can cook fried rice.

It is a dish to make when you want a quick bite. It can be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner, or anytime you like. Of course, you should have leftover, cold rice. So when you are cooking rice, add another cup of two to the pot and you'll have a delicious, quick meal the following day. What kind of rice? Long grain or Jasmine is the best but any kind- Uncle Ben's, brown rice - they are OK. Japanese sushi rice is a bit stickier so you have to stir fry more. Just keep the rice moving so it doesn't stick on the pan.

If you have a big craving for fried rice and don't have leftover rice, you can still have fried rice. Cook a pot of rice - the rice should be firm. You don't want hot mushy rice. In Chinese restaurants they make fried rice with freshly cooked rice. I've seen the line cooks do it - the rice goes straight from the cooker to the wok.

Here are some general instructions. Use whatever ingredients you please. Usually, the ingredients are of uniform size and cut into small bits. The photographs are self-explanatory.

Here are the ingredients I used:

4 rashers of smoked bacon
2 eggs, beaten, salt and pepper added
4 shallots, sliced thinly
Optional, a couple of tablespoons of ginger scallion sauce
A cup of frozen peas or any kind of mixed frozen vegetables
4 cups of cooked rice
2 or 3 tablespoons of oyster sauce
Sesame oil or hot chili oil
Oil for stir frying

Method:

Heat the wok or frying pan and add the oil. Fry the bacon and the chopped shallots. Add the ginger scallion oil.

Or fry the bacon until crisp. Remove the bacon from the pan, break into bits and set aside. (Toss the bacon bits in with the fried rice just before serving). Then fry the chopped shallots until they have softened. Mix in the ginger scallion oil.

Add the eggs and fry them the way you cook scrambled eggs.

The eggs should be runny. They will be cooked more later. Remove the eggs from the pan and set aside.

Add some more oil and heat it. Then add the cold rice, lumps and all. Use the spatula to break up the pieces.

Add the frozen peas. It isn't necessary to boil them first. Use the spatula to break the peas up.

Stir fry the peas and rice together.

Put the scrambled eggs back into the pan.

Stir fry everything together. Add some oyster sauce and mix everything together. Sprinkle some sesame oil (or hot chili oil) and toss everything together. Dish up and serve.

This dish was ready in fifteen minutes.

Here are some suggestions for ingredients:

• chicken
• roast duck
• BBQ pork or roast pork
  
• canned corned beef
• Montreal smoked meat with green onions fried rice is delicious
• Spam
• shrimps (frozen mixed seafood is very handy)
  
• sausages
• mushrooms
• lettuce
  
• in fact, just about anything can go into the fried rice

Here is an example, Curried beef fried rice.

One of our favourite fried rice combos is what we call Beijing fried rice. We ate it in Beijing and since then, I make it a lot in Vancouver.

It is just scrambled eggs fried rice. The only other ingredients are salt and pepper. But the salt is coarse sea salt. So you get bursts of crunchy, salt in your mouth as you eat the rice. Try it. It is cheap and delicious!

Before I joined the South Beach Diet Programme, I liked to mix some mayo to my fried rice.

What is your favourite fried rice? What do you add to it?

This is my entry to Lore's food blogging event, Original Recipes. Fried rice is not an original recipe but the combination and the addition of ginger scallion sauce makes it my own recipe. In my house, fried rice never tastes exactly the same way twice.

Lore is so helpful. She wants to "wants to encourage those of you who for one reason or another have never tried to create a recipe and to prove there’s nothing to be afraid of."

Check out the tasty recipes from last month's roundup at Culinarty. Enter your own original recipe, you have lots of time - the deadline for the roundup is August 15th.