Fried rice is the rice which is prepared by adding various ingedients or foods to the left over rice from some earlier days.Sometimes the question arises about how to make good fried rice. This question is quite puzzling because in Asian Food fried rice is hardly haute cuisine. To be true its just the opposite of that. Actually if you think fried rice cannot be a single dish. But its something like to mix up leftover rice with some other leftover food and making it one-dish meal. Actually the leftover rice could be added with lot other types of ingredients and flavours to make interesting new tasty versions of fried rice. So the leftover rice could be used to make simple egg fried rice to the Indonesian Nasi Goreng to the Thai Basil-flavoured Rice. All will help to fill your belly within no time.

To make fried rice you can start with with boiled or steamed white rice. But freshly cooked rice cannot help you to make fried rice. To make fried rice you must use the leftover rice which was there in your freeze for at least 1 day. If you will try to make fried rice with freshly made rice than it will produce fried mush instead of making fried rice. If you are planning to make fried rice but dont have leftover rice 1 day older than let your fresh rice cool for at least few hours in an airy environment.

Fried rice is not something like Hollandaise Sauce. Making fried rice doesnt actually need some sort of precise measurements and careful cooking. Never the less fired rice tastes great when you mix all types of leftovers like meats and veggies and recook them. Other leftovers could be like some grilled chicken, little scraps of ham or backon or may be some leftover peas and carrots and also boiled potatoes. All of them would really work very fine.Just you need to make sure they should not be too wet. As an example you must not combine that vegetable stir-fry with yellow bean sauce with your rice or your green curry chicken because this would give you a wet mush again.Its better if you mix the leftovers and rice with some spirited sessional vegetables like ginger, garlic, spring onions and salt and your fried rice could be ready within only 5 minutes.

When I decided to write this article, I was wondering which of my fried rice recipes will be good to share with you. There were so many.Ultimately I decided to tell you about Thai fried rice with lots of flavour that works really great as a single-dish meal too. Below is the procedure to make it.

Thai Basil fried rice (Khao Pad Kaprao)
And here's how to make it:

The ingredients you need are as below:

Cold, cooked long grain rice - 2 cups
Garlic - minced - 1-2 tbsp
Fresh red chillies - finely chopped - 1-3 tsp
Red, green, and yellow peppers mixed - 1/2 inch squares - 3/4 cup
Onion - 1/2 inch squares - 2 tbsp
Fish sauce or light soy sauce - 2 tbsp
White sugar - 2 pinches
White pepper - 1 tsp (use 1/2 tsp black pepper if you don't have this)
Fresh shrimp, shelled and deveined - 50 gm
Peanut oil - 2 tbsp
Holy basil (or sweet basil) leaves - torn by hand - 1 handful

How to make it

Get all the ingredients ready. It shouldn't take too long. I predict about 10 minutes. Heat a wok till the surface is almost smoking. Then add the oil and spread it around till it coats the surface evenly.

Temporarily move the wok off the heat and the add the garlic and chillies, then stir for about 10 seconds. This is to prevent the garlic and chilli from burning. Then add the peppers, onion, and shrimp, move the wok back to the high heat, add two pinches each of salt and pepper and toss around for another 30 seconds. The shrimp should be a little undercooked because it will continue to cook after the rice has been added.

Now add the rice to the pan, crumbling any big sticky blocks with your hands to ensure they're all separate. Toss the rice and the veggies well and keep stirring for another minute or two so that the rice grains are properly coated with the oil. Then add the sugar, white pepper, and fish or light soy sauce. Stir the mixture around again for another minute. Then taste the rice to check saltiness. If it's less, add some more fish sauce.

OK, we're down to the final stage of the cooking, my friend. This is when you throw in the basil leaves into the rice and something magical happens. All of a sudden, the aroma of the basil comes floating out of the wok, turning simple ingredients into a delicious dish. Stir the rice and basil mixture in the wok for another minute, then take it off the heat and serve. That's all there is to it.

Author of this article:Shiok
Author website:Fried Rice-shiokfood.com