Chicken and Vegetable Fried Rice

I LOVE Chinese food and have always wanted to learn how to make it. Fried rice is one of my favorites but when I've tried making it in the past it was always mediocre. I tried using one of those packets you can buy with seasonings from the store but it just wasn't very good either and not at all like the rice I could get at my local Chinese food restaurant. So a few days ago I spent a good hour looking at recipes for fried rice online and learning how it is typically done and so after taking my newly acquired knowledge and adding a twist of my own I came up with a recipe to try. You can't make fried rice with no fat so beware that although I would still say this recipe is fairly healthy it does have a bit of fat.

First thing you have to do is cook your rice. Just regular white long grain rice is what you'll need. The key is to use dry/almost stale rice so that the finished product will not be clumpy and will fry better. Most of the recipes said that you should make the rice 1-3 days ahead of time and leave in your fridge in a container. I didn't remember to cook my rice quite as far ahead of time as I would have liked but I think my speed dry method worked great too. I cooked my rice this morning around 11am, then when the rice was done I left the pot on the cool side of the stove with no lid. Every 30-45 minutes whenever I remembered I would go into the kitchen and give it a quick stir. Letting it be exposed to the air like this until I cooked at 5:30 this evening seemed to work great! Since all the recipes said that cold rice works better I also popped it in the fridge to get chilly around 4:30.

Next I cut up 2 chicken breasts and added 2 TBSP of soy sauce and some pepper and then cooked on Med/low heat until cooked through. Then took out of pan and set aside.

Then I cooked the veggies I had cut up to go into the rice. 1/2 an onion, 1 green pepper, one yellow pepper, 3 stalks of celery, and a few baby carrots. I cooked these on med/high heat until cooked but still crunchy. then set aside as well. I also scrambled one egg + one egg white and set aside too.

I mixed about 1 cup of soy sauce with 1 tsp of hoisin sauce. This is the secret ingredient! I got it from my local Asian market and it really adds a depth of flavor you will not get from just plain soy sauce.

The pan needs to be quite hot at this point. I had mine on 8 out of 10. I added 1 TBSP butter and 2 TBSP of sesame oil to the pan and let melt/get hot before adding the cold rice. Don't skip the sesame oil it has a very distinctive flavor that is WONDERFUL! Once you dump your cold rice into the pan take your spatula and break up any clumps. Then dump on your soy sauce/hoisin mixture and let the rice just fry for a few minutes before disturbing. Then every two minutes or so put your spatula under the rice and flip so the fried side is up and then mix around so that different grains of rice can get fried. I did this for about 15 minutes.

Then I added a few handfuls of fresh bean sprouts and mixed them in to cook for a few minutes.

The last step is to add everything back in and stir it up. Then you get to eat this warm, salty, deliciousness. My favorite part was when I got a piece of crunchy golden brown fried rice and the yellow peppers were so sweet I LOVED those in here too. It was an absolutely yummy (definitely not mediocre) and satisfying meal!!!!