Fried Rice!
Jun. 30th, 2011 07:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raxI haven't shared a recipe here in a while, so here's the fried rice I've been making in variations for the last while. I started making friend rice a couple of years ago as a thing to do with extra rice and such, and then when I lost a lot of my diet because of picking up a nighshade allergy, it became a bit more of a go-to for me. After recently visiting Beatrix (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bossgoji ), whose fried rice is seriously hardcore awesome, I've been tweaking her recipe and learning how to make it well and make it with the things I like to eat. I can successfully feed this to my omnivorous housemates unless I put natto in it (they'll even tolerate tempeh!) and postrodent liked it so much he asked for the recipe. Therefore, here you go:
FRIED RICE, YO.
(warning: I don't measure ingredients. If that bothers you, you may want different recipes from mine. Sorry! I'm compulsive about a lot of things, and weirdly one of them is not measuring ingredients, rather than getting precise quantities.)
Rice: I usually use jasmine rice because that's what I get 25lb bags of. It's best to have day-old rice --- I make fried rice when I've had leftover rice in the rice cooker for a day or two, but if you don't have a Neuro Fuzzyyou should buy one right now you can just store leftover rice in the fridge for a day.
Sauce:
So for me, the base of basically any food made in a skillet is going to be some combination of garlic, scallions, and onion in oil. I usually throw in spices (here: a touch of cinnamon and cumin), and the type of oil you use really does matter. Interestingly, and I picked this up from Bea, for fried rice I've been using a mixture of sesame oil and olive oil. I'm not sure why, but it works.
Once the garlic is starting to brown, I throw in other things that want to cook for a whilish. This most recent batch was seitan [0] and a chopped-up carrot; Trader Joe's has this great broccoli/carrot slaw that is cheap and convenient, or you can just use fresh broccoli, or really most vegetables work. I've also used tofu and tempeh for protein sources and those are tasty too; soft tofu is actually really nice if you miss the texture of egg in fried rice from before you were vegan even though you mostly didn't like egg and it kind of made you sick. Hypothetically. ANYWAY. You put stuff in like you are making a stirfry and, uh, I think sautee is the technical term.
Then, once it's mostly but not entirely done, you take it all out, re-oil the skillet, and throw in the rice. Stir it around in the oil and cook it for a minute, and then if there are precooked things you want to add, toss them in for a minute or two --- I put in natto [1] or frozen peas here. Then you add in the sauce and the other stuff! Here's the part I have trouble with: Don't stir it for a few minutes. You have to let it caramelize and crisp up a bit on the bottom. I have so much trouble with stirring it too much, because it's sizzling and that means I should stir it! But no! It means you should let it go. Go clean some dishes. Realphabetize the spice rack because your housemates screwed up cinnamon and coriander. Go look at the internet even (but set a timer for three minutes so you don't get wrapped up in an argument about Deleuze and forget you are cooking). And then, once you stir, let it sit again. For another two or three minutes. And then one more time.
Then eat it! Because oh man it's really tasty.
[0] For seitan I use a modified nightshade-free version of the Seitan O'Greatness recipe. You probably just want to google "seitan o'greatness" and use one of those, because I think it's better with nightshades, but one of these days I will post a Rachel-safe seitan recipe for folks who care.
[1] I LOVE NATTO. I am not sure whether it is a vegan dietary deficiency thing --- I've read conflicting things about that --- or if I just love natto. But man. Natto. Sometimes I feel sort of weirdly body awful, and then I eat natto, and then I feel better. I dunno if it's psychosomatic, but I totally recommend it if you have similar issues ever. Also Selene (one of my cats) likes it. So it must be good!
bossgoji ), whose fried rice is seriously hardcore awesome, I've been tweaking her recipe and learning how to make it well and make it with the things I like to eat. I can successfully feed this to my omnivorous housemates unless I put natto in it (they'll even tolerate tempeh!) and postrodent liked it so much he asked for the recipe. Therefore, here you go:FRIED RICE, YO.
(warning: I don't measure ingredients. If that bothers you, you may want different recipes from mine. Sorry! I'm compulsive about a lot of things, and weirdly one of them is not measuring ingredients, rather than getting precise quantities.)
Rice: I usually use jasmine rice because that's what I get 25lb bags of. It's best to have day-old rice --- I make fried rice when I've had leftover rice in the rice cooker for a day or two, but if you don't have a Neuro Fuzzy
Sauce:
- a splash of lime juice (lemon also works)
- a larger splash of rice wine vinegar
- some soy sauce
- one or two diced cloves of garlic
- some grated or diced ginger (powder works in a pinch but isn't as good)
- maybe a spoonful of sugar --- this is important, it helps things caramelize
- something to thicken it a bit: Bea uses store-bought "stir fry sauce;" this worked really well. Unfortunately, her random store stir fry sauce was safe for me to eat, but the ones near me aren't. I've tried corn starch, peanut butter, and nothing, and my favorite was honestly nothing, although the peanut butter seemed like it would be really cool if I had a slightly different flavor mixture, so I may try it again. I kind of want to try tahini, too.
So for me, the base of basically any food made in a skillet is going to be some combination of garlic, scallions, and onion in oil. I usually throw in spices (here: a touch of cinnamon and cumin), and the type of oil you use really does matter. Interestingly, and I picked this up from Bea, for fried rice I've been using a mixture of sesame oil and olive oil. I'm not sure why, but it works.
Once the garlic is starting to brown, I throw in other things that want to cook for a whilish. This most recent batch was seitan [0] and a chopped-up carrot; Trader Joe's has this great broccoli/carrot slaw that is cheap and convenient, or you can just use fresh broccoli, or really most vegetables work. I've also used tofu and tempeh for protein sources and those are tasty too; soft tofu is actually really nice if you miss the texture of egg in fried rice from before you were vegan even though you mostly didn't like egg and it kind of made you sick. Hypothetically. ANYWAY. You put stuff in like you are making a stirfry and, uh, I think sautee is the technical term.
Then, once it's mostly but not entirely done, you take it all out, re-oil the skillet, and throw in the rice. Stir it around in the oil and cook it for a minute, and then if there are precooked things you want to add, toss them in for a minute or two --- I put in natto [1] or frozen peas here. Then you add in the sauce and the other stuff! Here's the part I have trouble with: Don't stir it for a few minutes. You have to let it caramelize and crisp up a bit on the bottom. I have so much trouble with stirring it too much, because it's sizzling and that means I should stir it! But no! It means you should let it go. Go clean some dishes. Realphabetize the spice rack because your housemates screwed up cinnamon and coriander. Go look at the internet even (but set a timer for three minutes so you don't get wrapped up in an argument about Deleuze and forget you are cooking). And then, once you stir, let it sit again. For another two or three minutes. And then one more time.
Then eat it! Because oh man it's really tasty.
[0] For seitan I use a modified nightshade-free version of the Seitan O'Greatness recipe. You probably just want to google "seitan o'greatness" and use one of those, because I think it's better with nightshades, but one of these days I will post a Rachel-safe seitan recipe for folks who care.
[1] I LOVE NATTO. I am not sure whether it is a vegan dietary deficiency thing --- I've read conflicting things about that --- or if I just love natto. But man. Natto. Sometimes I feel sort of weirdly body awful, and then I eat natto, and then I feel better. I dunno if it's psychosomatic, but I totally recommend it if you have similar issues ever. Also Selene (one of my cats) likes it. So it must be good!
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Date: 2011-07-01 03:01 am (UTC)Also did I ever give you my mustard green beans recipe?
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Date: 2011-07-01 03:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-01 03:49 pm (UTC)mustard soy green beans
Date: 2011-07-01 06:43 pm (UTC)1 lb. bag frozen chopped green beans. Yes, I mean frozen. Or you can freeze fresh ones.
4 cloves garlic or to taste, peeled and chopped fine (more is more but if you're overwhelming the mustard that's a problem)
vegetable oil
dark soy sauce or good tamari
Dijon or other coarse strong mustard
mirin
cooking sake or Shao Hsing wine
sesame oil
lemon juice
Heat a splash of oil over medium heat and stir-fry the garlic until golden but not burned. Pour in a good splash of soy sauce-- my metric is 'slightly more than you think looks reasonable', maybe three or four tablespoons. A good dollop of mustard, a small dash of mirin, and stir. Taste to check the balance between the soy and the mustard-- at this point the flavor should be too strong. Adjust things until you have a flavor you would like if it weren't too strong. Bring to a boil.
Pour in beans, frozen and undefrosted, and put a lid on the pot immediately. The beans are steaming in their own ice. Steam twenty to twenty-five minutes, stirring every five to seven, until the beans show signs of soaking up sauce and are heated through. Take off the lid, pour in a splash of cooking sake, and stir violently for about a minute.
Scrape the pan into a heat-proof bowl, drizzle with sesame oil (lightly!) and lemon juice (more), and stir thoroughly. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least overnight. To serve, remove beans and chunks of garlic with a slotted spoon from the liquid. There will be a lot of liquid. You can pour maybe a third to a half of the liquid over the beans and either discard the rest or use it as a marinade for something else, or you can reduce it down to sauce consistency, but if you do that you need to cool it down thoroughly before you use it because this dish tastes good at room temperature or cold and isn't great hot.
The great thing with this is that it scales up well and it keeps basically forever and it even freezes okay (though not brilliantly), so if you decide you like it you can make like four or five pounds and just have it there. Also a very good contribution to potlucks and a Thing I Put In Bento. Possible things to play with adding: ginger, Szechuan pepper. I haven't tried either but they seem logical.