Simple Fried Rice

I wrote about "How to cook the perfect fried rice" in mysimplefood.com a few weeks ago. I realized that I never did a posting on fried rice despite cooking in regularly in my kitchen. To me, fried rice is such an easy dish. All I need is overnight rice and then I can throw in whatever ingredients into the fried rice.

This time, it will be a very basic and simple fried rice. I only need 4 ingredients.
1. Overnight rice (kept in fridge)
2. 2 eggs
3. Long Beans - 4-5 stalks (chopped)
4. Some minced pork or chicken

Simple steps -

1. My tip for a perfect fried rice - I always cook the ingredients first and then kept aside. This is to ensure that I only focus on making the rice perfect when I put the rice in the wok. So in this case, I used a 2 TBSP of oil in wok, add in the minced meat, stir fry and then add in the chopped long beans. Stir fry for 5 minutes, add some salt, scoop up and keep aside.

2. In the same wok, add 1 TBSP of oil. Pour beaten egg into the wok.

3. Do not need to flip the egg. Just pour the overnight rice on top of egg. Remember, make sure that you have loosen the rice before you put into wok.

4. Mix the rice around in the wok in a fast motion. Fire can be at mid to high. Add some salt and light soy sauce. If you want it to be darker, you can add dark soy sauce.

5. Continuously stir the rice in wok to prevent rice from sticking to wok. Add the cooked meat and long beans on rice.

6. Now, all you need to do is to continuously stir fry to mix the rice around and let the heat from the wok enveloped the rice. Imagine you are a top chef in the kitchen, using your strong arms to stir up the best fried rice.

7. That's it. It's that easy. The fried rice looks a bit dry cos I used very little oil and I do not like my rice wet. To me, most important is to get a fried rice that has "heat of the wok" ("wok hei"). Then all the ingredients will blend well together.

Voila! Ready to eat! Yum Yum!

Click here for my full posting on "How to cook the perfect fried rice at home"

Claypot Chicken Rice

I should call my recipe Rice Cooker Chicken Rice as I don't have a claypot and I just use the easy way out of a rice cooker. Since it is home cooking, I think the rice cooker is the easiest way to bluff my way through for this rendition of claypot chicken rice.

Simple ingredients -
1) Chicken Thighs (2 pieces) - cut up to smaller pieces. You can opt for just chicken breast too. Marinade with dark and light soy sauce, ginger juice, salt, pepper, sesame oil.
2) 2-3 mushroom soaked and cut in slices
3) 1 chinese sausage (lap cheong) - cut in slices
4) Shallots - fried
5) green onions - chopped for garnishing
6) Rice - enough for 3-4 person.

Simple steps -

1) I start with frying the shallots till fragant and scoop aside. Then I add the chinese sausages and mushroom and stir fry till fragant. Remove and keep aside.

2) Then cook the chicken. Add a water for gravy. Add salt and dark soy sauce for taste. No need to cook the chicken for too long. The chicken can be removed even though just 3/4 ready.

3) Now for the rice. The easy way is to put everything into the rice-cooker all at the same time. This means after washing the rice and putting enough water to cook, you add the cooked chicken, mushroom and sausage at the same time and just wait for it to cook. That's easy and you can opt for this option too.

I decided to do a little more work, which is to wait for the rice to boil in rice cooker, until it is 3/4 ready (before the click), rice at this time is usually still wet. I put in all the cooked ingredients including the fried shallots. Mix the ingredients and rice quickly to prevent sticking and put the cover back on to continue the cooking process.

4) Just wait for another 5-10 minutes and the rice will be ready and fragrant. Garnish with some chopped green onions. Loosen the rice in rice cooker to prevent it from sticking to the pot.

5) It's simple and fast and this can be the one complete meal for dinner. Voila! Ready to Eat! This is really yummy!!

Loh Mai Rice

Since I made loh mai kai, I decided to go for an another recipe, an easier version, more or less same ingredients but definitely tasty and yummy. Loh Mai Fan or just plainly called Glutinous rice, I often find it sold in Malaysia at morning market and night market (pasar malam) alongside the fried meehoon, mee and the different assortment of kueh. It is surprisingly easy to make and pretty fast too.

Simple ingredients -

1) Glutinous rice - 200gm - soak in water overnight.
2) Chicken breast -10-15 medium cubes

3) Mushroom - 5-6 small pieces - soak and cut to slices

4) Chinese sausage (lap cheong) - 2 pieces - cut to slices.

5) Dried shrimp - a handful - soaked

6) Raw peanuts - a handful

7) Shallots
8) Marinate for chicken - soy sauce, dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, salt, pepper, sugar, sesame oil.

9) Seasoning for rice - 2 tbsp oil or lard, soy sauce, dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, salt, pepper.

Simple preparation -

1) Firstly in a dry hot wok, put in the peanuts. On medium fry, stir the peanuts around from time to time. Once it is hot, the skin will come off. Peanuts are ready. Remove and keep separately.

2) Then put oil in the wok and stirfry the shallots till cripsy. Drain oil, remove and put aside.

3) In the same oil (add a bit more if not enough), fry the dried shrimp till fragrant and crispy. Remove and keep aside.


4) Put in the Chinese sausage (lap cheong) into wok. Do not need to add oil as the lap cheong is oily. Once fragrant, remove and keep aside.

5) Next, in the remaning oil, stirfry the mushroom first.

6) After add the marinated chicken. Stir and add some water. Once the chicken is brown (it's ok if not completely cooked) remove and put aside.

7) In the same wok, put in the rice. Please ensure rice have been soaked for at least 3 hours. Much better if you soaked it overnight. Put in the seasonings.

8) Next, add in all the earlier cooked ingredients (except kacang) and mixed with rice.

9) Scoop it up into a big bowl (flat bottom) and steam about 1 hour.

10) That's eat. It may look like many steps but it is pretty easy. Just get all your ingredients ready and it will just be a step by step process. Voila! Ready to Eat! Yummmmmy! Oh yeah! don't forget to add the peanuts.

Loh Mai Kai

Inspiration - arhhhh...isn't it yummy......everytime I look at the photos, I feel like eating it up. I was determined to make my own Loh Mai Kai...translated Glutinous Rice with Chicken. This is a normal dim sum dish though the Chinese restaurants in Dallas usually have the rice wrapped in lotus leaf. So I kinda miss my round shaped loh mai kai, after researching some recipes on the net, plus minus some ingredients here and there....this is what I came up with - my very simple loh mai kai. It's so yummy.

Simple recipe

1) Glutinous rice - 200gm

2) Chicken -10-15 medium cubes - can use chicken breast or chicken thigh

3) Mushroom - 5-8 small pieces

4) Marinate for chicken - soy sauce, dark soy sauce, ginger juice, oyster sauce, salt, pepper, sugar, sesame oil.

6) Seasoning for rice - 2 tbsp oil or lard, soy sauce, dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, salt, pepper and five spice powder.

5) Optional - Chinese sausage or Char siu- though I did not have it available when I was making this.

Simple steps -

1) Wash rice and soak overnight. Next day, steam rice for 30 mins. Remove and leave aside.

2) Marinate chicken for at least 1 hr. Overnight preferred.

Firstly, stir fry mushroom with some garlic and oil. Then add the marinate chicken and stir fry for a few minutes. No need to fully cook the chicken. Add a bit of water to fully integrate all the ingredients.

3) Arrr...the seasoning for the rice is very important. For the best taste, it is recommended to use some lard. So if you happen to have some pork/chicken lard, you can add to the overall mixture - soy sauce, oyster sauce, dark sauce sauce, salt, pepper, sesame oil, five spice powder and 2 cup of water. Mix well.

4) Mix the seasoning well with the rice.

5) Now for the preparation - Prepare 6 bowls - I just use my Chinese rice bowls. Grease it with some oil and then put in 2 pcs of Chicken and 1-2 pcs of mushroom. Then top the rice into each bowl.

6) Steam for another 30-40 mins till ready.

Voila! Ready to eat! Soooo yummy!

Chicken Rice

Inspiration - I was looking for a hearty chicken rice meal but I wanted to make it really really simple and really really fast. My hubby was coming home for dinner soon. So with a little "help" and doing some short cuts with the chicken preparation, I actually made a yummy meal.


Simple Steps -

1) I used this ready made spice (Singapore Hainanese Chicken Rice from Asian Home Gourmet) for the rice chicken stock but I did add more garlic and ginger. With a little oil or you can even use butter, I stir-fried some ginger and garlic slices and the pkt of spices and then added water enough for boiling of rice. Let the ingredients simmer for 2 minutes.

2) Wash the rice and then add the spices ingredient mixed earlier.

3) This was my short cut. With a piece of chicken breast (with some skin still intact) - marinate with just salt, pepper and garlic juice. I just place the chicken breast on top of the rice in the rice cooker and let everything cook at the same time. I really don't know how it will turn out especially concerned that the chicken may not turn out as well but then since I want it fast and simple, let's see.

4) Surprisingly, it turned turned out really well. The chicken was moist and tender and all I needed to do was to cut up to chicken slices. It looked like the real thing :)

5) As for the rice, it turned out not bad, though I was hoping that it will be more fragrant since I did add the pkt of spices. However, I don't think the spices were that great, infact the next time, I would probably made fresh spices myself.

6) Now for the complete feel of chicken rice, you must have the dips. I made 3 sauce dips. 1) Soy sauce, dark soy sauce, oyster sauce and oil mixed together. 2) Garlic sauce - grinded with some lime juice and sugar 3) chilli sauce - grinded chilli with some garlic juice and lime juice.

7) And there you have it, my very simple chicken rice meal. Voila! Ready to eat! Yum yum!