How to Cook Perfect Slightly Spicy Pork Fried Rice
A long, long time ago (about 10 years) I became fed up with fried rice at Chinese restaurants. I hated how everything tasted like it was soaked in soy sauce and quickly thrown together with whatever was left in the stir fry pots. I felt that fried rice was being mistreated and used as plate filler and not as a quality side.
I decided that I was going to re-invent the wheel, except this wheel would have wings. I have two meals that I can cook perfectly: a grilled cheese sandwich and this fried rice. This article will show you how to make quality fried rice, step-by-step. I have only told few of this recipe, but since I love Associated Content so much, I decided to let it be made public to my dearest reader friends.
What you’ll need to serve as 6 sides or 3 standalone meals:
½ of an onion
1 garlic clove
2 cups of rice, long grain Jasmine Thai (no exceptions!)
1 /2 bell pepper
1 lb. pork loin, no bones
3 tbsp. cooking oil (preferably olive)
1 cup soy sauce
½ to whole bottle Lawry’s Thai Ginger Marinade
Lemon Pepper seasoning
Garlic Salt seasoning
Rice Cooker
1 Wok
1 stir-fry skillet
1 large wooden spoon
1 plastic mixing bowl
1 Large Serving bowl
1 Quart-size Ziploc bag
Ok, it’s an interesting mix of ingredients and items, but this is the “perfect” recipe. If you don’t have a wooden spoon or a wok, run to the store and get one! Or just grab a large skillet and a smaller skillet. If you have a wok, don’t use any metal utensils in it or you’ll scratch the special, non-stick surface.
1. Start cooking the rice. If you own a rice cooker, it’s pretty easy. Put the two cups of rice in the cooking bowl. Fill it with water and rinse the rice one time. Fill it again with water until the water is about half an inch over the rice. This is key because it affects how soft or hard your rice is. If you don’t have a rice cooker, get a sauce pot and follow the same directions, except add a pat of butter when you star to cook the rice and set it at medium-high and cover.
2. Slice the pork loin into strips and then cut the strips in half. Each piece should be about the length of your thumb if you are serving this as a meal, or half the length of your thumb if this is a side. Once you get the meat chopped up, stick it in the Ziploc bag and pour at least half a bottle of the marinade in it. Shake it up, stick it in the fridge.
3. Chop up the onion, garlic clove and bell pepper so that they resemble little squares, except the garlic clove. That can be in little bits. It’s best to either do it by hand or use that handy Pampered Chef chopper. Just don’t use a blender. Once you get the vegetables chopped up, put them in the mixing bowl and season with garlic salt and lemon pepper. About 5 or 6 dashes of each should do. Shake the bowl up, set it to the side.
4. Wait about 10 minutes or so before starting the next part. This would be a good time to clean up whatever’s left of your vegetable and meat chopping and whatever else is going on in the kitchen. Make sure the meat is cooking all the way through. You should have a small layer of marinade coating the bottom of the skillet and your meat smelling so nice cooking on top of it.
5. Put about a tablespoon of cooking oil in the smaller stir fry skillet and heat it to about medium. Toss your marinated pork in there. If your rice is done in the rice cooker, take off the lid and let it breathe. If you cooked it on the stove, stir it around once you see that it’s almost done. Empty the rice into the serving bowl and let it sit for awhile. Check on your meat and make sure it isn’t burning. If it’s done, turn it off and let it sit.
6. In the wok, put about half a tablespoon of cooking oil and the vegetables in. Stir them around on low-medium heat. Keep them fairly crisp. You don’t have to cook them all the way through yet. Once the veggies seem slightly cooked and still crisp, put them back in the plastic bowl.
7. Take the rice and stick it in the wok. Throw in the rest of the cooking oil (should be 1 and 1/2) and the soy sauce. Keep stirring that rice around the pot. You don’t want to let it sit too long, or you’ll regret it when it is time to clean the wok or skillet.
8. When the rice is slightly brown and fried, toss in the vegetables and keep mixing for about a minute and a half. Then toss in the meat. Mix it all up slowly for about 2 minutes and then put it all in the serving bowl and you’re done!
It seems like a lot of steps, but when you do it once, you’ll find it fairly easy. If you get uppity, chop up the veggies and marinade the meat in the morning time for that extra flavor.
You can use chicken or shrimp if you want. Experiment with different seasonings. The key is cooking the rice, meat, and veggies with separate seasonings and separate times until the very end. When you do this, you aren’t eating MSG-flavored rice; you’re eating a real meal.
