Joshua Weissman Chinese Fried Rice
It Looks The Part
Time: 47 minutes
Ingredient Availability: 4/5
Difficulty: 1/5
If you ever have some plain rice leftover, you can make it into a meal by making fried rice. It’s really pretty simple. Just add time oil, vegetables, eggs, soy sauce, and maybe some meat and you have some fried rice. I’ve made some by just winging it in the past and they usually come out pretty good. Joshua Weissman has a recipe of his own that I would like to try. Is it better than what I’ve done in the past?
Key Ingredients and Omissions:
All of the ingredients are pretty standard except for two: Shaoxing wine and Char Siu pork. The latter is optional, so I just left it out. The wine is something you may need to go to a specialty store to find. Also, make sure you have your rice cooked ahead of time and that it has been refrigerated, preferably overnight. This really has an impact on the end result.
Tools:
Wok
Sharp Knife
Cutting Board
Cooking Review:
Vegetable Prep: 16 minutes
The prep for this recipe is pretty important as once you start cooking, things go by pretty quickly and it’s best to have everything ready to go. I chopped up the onion, garlic, peeled carrots, and green onion. You should also go ahead and beat the three eggs together here. It caught me off guard later.
Preparing Shrimp: 7 minutes
If you have pre-peeled shrimp this should be much quicker, but mine were only deveined, so it took me extra time to peel them before chopping them into smaller pieces.
Sauce: 5 minutes
Making the sauce just requires mixing the corresponding ingredients together in a small bowl. I used black pepper instead of white pepper.
Stir Frying: 14 minutes
I put my wok over high heat and added two tablespoons of vegetable oil and let it heat up before adding the onion, carrots, and half of the garlic. I cooked that, stirring and tossing frequently, for about 3 minutes before adding the shrimp and cooking for another 2 minutes. The rice was added next and broken up while heating through, which took about 3 minutes. I moved the rice to the side and added the rest of the oil. After the oil had heated up, I poured in my beaten eggs and scrambled them before breaking them up and distributing through the rice. The green onion, frozen peas, and sauce were mixed through the rice. Finally, the wok was removed from the heat and the rest of the garlic was added.
Analysis:
If you’ve ever had fried rice from a chicken wing restaurant, you’ve had something very similar to this flavor wise. The texture is definitely better than the average fried rice from a wing spot, as the grains of rice are more distinct and some have a crispness to them. The vegetables, while soft, still retain a slightly fresh crunch. The seasoning is fine, nothing special. I wouldn’t say it’s bland or needs more, but there really isn’t anything that jumps out in the flavor department. Surprisingly, the shrimp wasn’t overcooked, which was nice. I really think that this fried rice is pretty average. I feel like I’ve made better when I was just throwing stuff together. I’m going to give this a 7/10. If you’ve never made fried rice before, I think this is a good starting point, but you can also do much better.
