carola bARTz: Asian food

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Gingery Fried Rice

Gingery fried rice is a dish that not only tastes delicious, but also cooks quickly, so it's important that you chop and prepare everything before you start the actual process of cooking, because once you start putting the first ingredients in the wok you won't have time for any prep work anymore. Depending on how you cook the rice, this can be a vegan dish (I always use a little butter while cooking rice, so not vegan for us) and if you substitute the soy sauce for tamari sauce it's also gluten free. I found the recipe in the NYT, but changed a few things. For example, the recipe asks for frozen peas, but since the Geek is allergic to peas that wasn't an option for us. I will show you my version here.

You will need:

4 cups cooked, day-old jasmine rice
5 TB canola oil
3/4 pound (mixed) fresh mushrooms, thinly sliced
kosher salt and black pepper
3/4 pound baby bok choy, trimmed, then sliced crosswise
5 scallions, trimmed, greens and whites thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves
2-3 TB finely chopped fresh ginger
2 TB soy sauce (or tamari)
2 TB sesame oil
1/8 tsp white pepper
1 egg

Take the cooked rice out of the refrigerator and set it aside at room temperature.

In a lare wok, heat 2 TB canola oil over medium-high. Add the mushrooms, season with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, until browned and tender, 5 or 6 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl.

(As you can see, my wok is well used)

Add 1 TB canola oil to the wok and heat over medium-high. Add the bok choy, scallions, and garlic. Season with salt and pepper and stir-fry, stirring frequently, until aromatic and barely crisp-tender, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer to the bowl with the mushrooms.

Add the remaining 2 TB canola oil to the wok and heat over medium-high. Add the rice and cook, stirring occasionally, until toasted and toothsome, 4 to 5 minutes. Add the ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil and white pepper, and stir until rise is evenly coated in soy sauce mixture, and no uncoated rice grains remain, 1 to 2 minutes. In this step, you can also add zest and juice of one lemon, if you like - I sometimes do.