Fried Rice Recipes

I worked in the take-out section of a supermarket for a year and a half. When the store was built in 1996, they had a large emphasis on "International" cuisines. Part of this promotion was the "Oriental Express" section of take-out, which is where I was most often stationed. The irony is that I'm as white as the sun is bright. But this was okay, since the "Chinese" food was pretty bastardized for ignorant American palates anyhow.

Our most popular dish was the fried rice, and I had to make it often. But I got to throw around huge woks, so I didn't mind. The method that I was taught created pretty unimpressive rice, in my opinion. It was too soggy and lacking in flavor. I had to tinker with the ingredients and proportions before I felt the rice was worth serving. It took a while to convince my manager that my experimentations would yield worthwhile results. But between the collaborations of myself and another Oriental Express worker, we got it right, so she let us keep the formula.

We didn't work by precise measurements for most of it, so I can only list off the ingredients and methods.

Into a well-oiled wok over medium flame, add the following to your preference:

- Coarsely chopped red onions (or preferrably shallots)
- Finely diced carrots
- Snow peas
- Finely chopped sweet red peppers
- Minced garlic
- Soft chicken bullion (You can use other bullion flavors, just make sure they're soft.)
- A bit of sugar
- Several dashes of freshly ground white pepper

Add just a touch of water to the mix. Stir-frying pulls out the water that's inside the vegetables, so you shouldn't need to add a lot. The salt in the bullion only enhances this effect. Too much water usually results in soggy rice.
Fry the batch over high heat until the onions and carrots begin to visibly brown at the edges. Make sure the bullion is fully dissolved into the water.

Turn off the flame and let the mixture set for three or four minutes. This allows the vegetables to draw a bit of the water in again. The water is now seasoned and the veggies will taste better for it. Resist your temptation to drain the fluids from the wok. As long as everything isn't nearly submerged, your rice will be fine.

While your wok is cooling, prepare the sauce. It's pretty simple but the ratio is important. - Three parts soy sauce to one part cooking sherry. You don't need a ton to flavor the rice - the bullion is the workhorse. But however much you plan to use, keep to that proportion. If you don't have cooking sherry, don't worry. It's not strictly necessary but it does enhance the flavor significantly.

Add your cooked rice to the cooled wok. (If you feel it's still too hot but don't want to wait forever, coat the wok's perimeter with a light dose of oil and let it trickle down the bowl. I found that keeping oil in a cleaned-out ketchup squeeze bottle worked great.) I prefer steamed rice over boiled but sometimes this isn't an option. Steamed rice generally seems fluffier to me.
Stir the vegetables and water into the rice until evenly distributed. Then pour the sauce mix over the top and stir until the whole batch evenly takes on a slightly darker color. Liberally sprinkle on some sesame oil and give the batch one last stir.

Hopefully it all came out well and your rice isn't too soggy or dark. If you overestimated the soy sauce (which isn't hard to do) and the rice is a bit too salty, I found that reheating the rice over low heat and mixing in one or two teaspoons of brown sugar counteracts some of the salt. Don't add too much at first. You can't take it back. Add less, then more as is needed until the saltiness is reduced. You don't want to actually taste the sugar.

That's how I prepared fried rice for mass consumption.

Jam it back in, in the dark.