KatjaI wanted to start off #SpoonieEats with a series of something I find wonderfully comforting: rice porridge, or congee.
But as my favorite is "century eggs and pork porridge", I thought that'd be a rather hard sell right off the bat.
So fried rice it is, because it absolutely can be a #30MinuteMeal, possibly even a 15 minute meal at its most basic.
What I do, is I almost always have rice in the fridge, which is a tremendous shortcut.
The key here to it not sticking, is you mix your eggs in with your rice first, before you do anything else.
This has the added benefit of, if you're starting with just-cooked rice, even that won't stick.
Scallions or spring onions freeze quite well, so it's nice to have a bit of that on hand. If not, mincing a wee bit of scallion doesn't tend to take long.
You can substitute with shallot or onion and use a food processor or chopper to get it fairly fine.
Sorry, this is a no measurement zone, but I tend to go with at least one egg per quarter cup of cooked rice.
If it's my only meal for the day, I might do 2 or 3 eggs per quarter cup.
Heat the pan and add a wee bit of your preferred fat of choice.
I like to use bacon fat or lamb drippings, but you do you.
Dump the eggy rice in, let it sort of do its thing for a few seconds because there's no need to rush into tossing it about, then start moving things when the bottom starts going golden.
Gently fold and toss until everything is toasty, then add in some soy sauce to taste.
How much depends on your brand of soy sauce and whether you like your fried rice with more tones of caramelized umami, or if you like it a bit lighter, with the egg shining through.
The alliums go on near the end as a sort of garnish, something to bite back against the richness of the egg and the starch of the rice.
You can either take things off the heat immediately after or cook the bite off a bit.
That's the basic fried rice.
You can even skip the alliums if you're not feeling up to it.
If you want to add in some tricolor veg (peas, corn, carrots), the frozen version does very well here, but you need to cook that first, preferably separately so your fried rice doesn't get soggy.
And that's extra effort.
So you'd start with stir-frying the frozen veg with a wee bit of oil until it's all heated through.
Then you dump it into a bowl and start with the eggy rice step.
Personally, if I'm not up to doing the veg separately, I just don't bother, because I hate how sticky and wet fried rice gets.
That's also part of why the alliums get added at the very end the way I do it.
If you want to add some left over chicken or pork chop or what not, I roughly chop that and put that in after the eggs and rice have set and are toasty-fluffy, but before the alliums.
I don't tend to start from raw meat with this, because spoons.
Nicki @cardiffbites@Katja I love creamy polenta for my low spoons days. Throw in lots of dairy, an egg and whatever protein I have. Maybe some hot sauce. Takes 10 minutes but super filling #SpoonieEats
@cardiffbites That sounds so good! Esp the bit with hot sauce at the end. I add a bit of garlic chili sauce to my egg porridge and it's perfection.
@Katja I like the contrast of the creaminess with the vinegary hot sauce
@cardiffbites Yep! I can't really have just unrelenting creaminess/richness or I end up not eating as much as I need to.