There are many types of fried rice (including Indian and Malay style) in South East Asia. As a lady of Chinese descent (born outside China and I'm NOT a Chinese national), one of the first 'dishes' we learned how to 'cook' besides washing the rice grains and boiling water is to fry the eggs, omelettes, whatever you wanna call it, eggs and ways to cook them are the first ingredient one masters in a Chinese kitchen.
Hence it is almost always certain to have fried egg with fried rice.
It is said fried rice cooked with a Chinese wok over open/real fire tastes way better than any other ways.
Anyway, the pix below show the ingredients that I usually prepare for fried rice as the main dish, if my overnight rice seems lacking, I shall Westernise my Asian fried rice and dice some potatoes to add more volume to the starchy dish.
Sliced garlic and onions are a must for a start, fry in hot oil till fragrant. Then the rest, it's up to you!
Some swear by frying the eggs first after the garlic and onions turned fragrant. Some only add the eggs after everything else were added and cooked. If you ask me, being a 'fair' person, I add half the eggs first, then cook and add everything then I add the other half after. Fair and square, so you can have two different types of egg tastes.
If you want to go a step further, especially if you are a big egg fan like me, use a clean wok, heat it up, beat the eggs and lay the beaten eggs flat on the wok or the pan if you find it easier. Scoop up the flat fried egg piece onto a dry chopping board, slice the eggs thinly and add the sliced eggs on top of your fried rice before serving, that's your dressing and you get an extra differently cooked egg with a different taste in a single dish!
The usual ingredients are meat slices, meat cubes, mixed vegetables frozen or fresh, diced carrots, corn, green peas. Sometimes I take the short cut and cut green leafy vege instead, hey, call me lazy to dice or cut the vege into smaller cubes and opting for green leaf vege which requires less preparation but they give you the fibre and roughage you need - all the same and hubby doesn't mind the taste!
It is advisable to cook the meat before the vege.
I usually add the meat first (after fragrant garlic and onion), then add the meat, wait till 80% cooked, then add in the harder to cook vege like stalks or green peas, cook for awhile and only then add the rice and I add the soft green leafy parts after the rice is more or less evenly heated up. Usually overnight rice left in the fridge is best.
For seasoning, add salt to taste, sprinkle a few dashes of pepper powder, some like to add sugar, or add chicken essence powder, shrimp paste or Chilli powder/flakes, anything goes!
For people like me, my hubby's fav is when I add dark sweet soy sauce. So I get salt and sugar all in one! Hence the blackest pix below is truly mine. The other two are cooked by my cousin. :) you can even add sesame seeds (the nice round presentation in the first pic below).
As for oil, any cooking oil will do, however I like to add a little bit of sesame oil for fragrance. Sometimes I do experiment with olive oil too. I think if you read my old blog posts, I would have mentioned I experimented with almost everything!
Practice and practice and before long, this will be the easiest and one of the quickest dishes to prepare! Bon appetit!
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