Quick Fried Rice

Fried rice is actually very simple. Just fry some chopped garlic, add cooked rice, add some salt, mix it around, and that's pretty much it. That's how you cook your basic fried rice.

If you want to add some flourishes, it's really up to you. Here is an example of a simple flourish that I did just tonight.

First thing you do is chop a whole head of garlic. Yep, a whole head. Now if you think that's too much, you can do just half. But me, I love garlic, so a whole head of it it is. You need to chop that rather finely so you don't end up with big pieces in your fried rice.

Take one or two eggs (or more if you have plenty of rice), and beat them in a bowl.

Put some oil in a pan, turn on the heat and when it's hot enough, put the beaten egg in it. All you need to do is to make sure all the egg is cooked. Mix and chop this up as much as you like so you end up with little bits of cooked egg. Take it off the pan.

Add some more oil to the pan, then place the garlic in it. Place a bit of salt into this, or flavor mixes of your preference then fry it until the garlic is somewhat browned. I do this so that if by chance you bite on a piece of garlic, it has actually has some taste to it. Salted fried garlic has actually a nice flavor if you do it right. It usually works better if the heat is on low.

Now you can take whatever leftovers you have in the ref, perhaps some leftover chicken or fish, or whatever meat stuff you have lying around. If you have things like bacon or ham or hotdog, that would be just great. Ideally, the best thing to add here is a chopped good quality chorizo. But I don't have that at the moment.  I found a piece of hot dog, and that's the one I used. Chop them into little pieces and then add them into your frying garlic.

Mix that all around until the meat is well heated.

Now add the rice. Rice has to be already cooked of course. Add a little more salt (not too much because you already added some earlier on in the garlic), set the heat to medium high,  then mix it well so that the garlic flavors get evenly distributed.

Add the chopped egg and continue mixing for a few more minutes.

That's pretty much finished as it is, but you can definitely add more flourishes to this. You can add a couple of tablespoons of oyster sauce, or ketchup, or barbecue sauce, depending on what you like. Just make sure you no longer add salt to the rice if you intend on adding these as it would probably make your rice too salty.

You can also add chopped bell peppers, or green peas or chopped green onion to give some color to it. You can also add some toasted garlic on top of it for additional flavor.

Add some turmeric if you want it to turn yellow. It actually looks pretty nice that way.

Toasted garlic, by the way, is kind of an art. Do it wrong and it would taste bitter. I can do it myself by frying chopped garlic on very low heat, but it takes a long time. I just buy prepared toasted garlic in the local market.