Chicken Fried Rice

The Hubs and I are really bad about leftovers. I always have the best intentions when I save something. Especially since there are a few nights a week where our schedule means we aren’t having a formal meal together. That would of course be the perfect time to take care of that leftover soup, or make that leftover meat into a sandwich. But what usually happens is I end up eating pita chips and ice cream, and the leftovers eventually get thrown away. So, I really like the idea of something that actually uses leftover rice as a main ingredient. The only problem was that we didn’t actually have any leftover rice, so I made some before work in the morning, and we had it that night. Still, I definitely know what I’m making next time we have a take out carton of rice leftover, because this was phenomenal. So good, and I am not exaggerating, that the Hubs claims that he’ll never get fried rice at a restaurant again. Yeah. Big words. Anyway, we took a basic fried rice recipe from the Bite SizedBlog and added chicken and a few other ingredients. The great thing about this form of meal is you can pretty much add in any vegetable or meat you want and it’s going to come out great.

2 chicken breasts, cooked & shredded

3 tbsp oil

1 onion, diced

1 chile pepper, minced (we used a Habanero)

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 Tbsp ginger, minced

2 cups old rice, room temperature

2 Tbsp butter

3 Tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp rice wine vinegar

2 tsp sesame oil

2 eggs

4 scallions, chopped

Small handful of chopped fresh basil (Thai basil would be great, too)

Now, we did not use a wok because we’ve had trouble with them in the past. But apparently, the secret is using it over a flame and not an electric burner. So if you can make that happen, you might want to try the wok since it will get your rice a little crispier than we were able to get ours.

I boiled my chicken first and shredded it, then seasoned it with salt and pepper and set it aside. Next heat up the oil so it’s good and hot. We used grape oil but I might try peanut oil next time for a little extra flavor. Then add in the onion and chile pepper and sauté them until they are brown and crispy. Then lower the heat and add in the garlic and ginger just for 30 seconds to a minute. Add in your rice and butter and stir in as the butter melts. You want the rice to get a little crispy as well, which was hard for us. A little tip from the Hubs… be patient. We have a tendency to always be stirring, and that’s going to make it hard to get crispy rice. So don’t worry about letting the rice be still for a minute or so between stirs.

Use the soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and sesame oil to deglaze the pan and get all those tasty brown bits up. Then add in your eggs. I actually think we could have used one more egg, but see what feels right for you. You want to stir them in right away, making sure to break the yolk. Do it one at a time if you have to. You don’t want the egg to just cook where you threw it in. We added the chicken in at this point, and also another tablespoon or two of soy sauce since the chicken seemed to suck up all the liquid. Then we stirred in the scallions and basil for another minute and we were done! We enjoyed it so much that even though we made a lot, there were definitely no leftovers.