Classic Pork Fried Rice

Most of the time I’m operating at full speed. There are days when I can’t remember what I did the night before and I’m constantly bouncing about the place working on a theme or project or frantically trying to meet all my writing deadlines. It might sound strange but nothing relaxes me more than experimenting in the kitchen and while the entire month of February was insanely hectic, this week I decided to unwind a wee bit and get back to pottering about in the kitchen and creating some new recipes.

I source a lot from Pinterest and I double check on Youtube because I like to tweak recipes just like I did for my Cantonese Soy Noodles a few days ago. The recipe was  a hit and it was an impromptu one, I decided to do some more digging and stumbled upon this delicious Pork Fried Rice recipe and just had to make it. It’s superbly simple and while I added pork sausages to give it a nice meaty flavour, you could skip that and just stick to vegetables as well. Hope this makes you hungry 😉

INGREDIENTS :

1 cup rice to boil ( or cooked rice )
1 onion
2 spring onions
1 celery stalk
2 small carrots
1 packet of sausages
2 eggs
10 cloves of garlic ( chopped )
Soy sauce
Sesame oil
Vegetable cooking oil
Fish sauce
Chinese cooking wine

METHOD :

1. Boil a cup of rice in water with a pinch of salt and cook. Ideally avoid basmati rice, it’s preferable not to use long thin grains but instead use broken rice or shorter grains. For a fried rice is always taste s better and it’s what the Chinese use. Once the rice is ready, set aside to cool and continue with prep.

2. Chop all the vegetables in small pieces as well as the pork sausages. It’s best to dice them or fine chop them so then you don’t have big chunks or uneven pieces in each bite. I find the flavour and taste of the food changes if you chop your ingredients too thick. Also in a fried rice you want all of the ingredients to blend easily together and compliment each other, not for any one to stick out.

3. In a smaller pan, add a drop of oil, a knob of butter and cook the chopped sausages. Cook these till they start to release their own oil and cook so you’re not adding raw sausages to your fried rice. It will take approx 2 or 3 minutes once the pan is hot. Do not skip the little bit of oil because butter burns fast the minute the pan gets hot, Once you’ve cooked the sausage, set it aside in a plate. Remember to save as much of the juice or oil that the sausages release and add it to the rice, it will give you a lovely flavour.

4. Heat the same pan and add some more oil and butter to it. Once it’s hot, crack both the eggs in and scramble them. The hotter the pan is, the faster and better they will scramble but you need to constantly stir or rather mash the eggs. This should cook in about 4 to 5 minutes and with the spoon try to break the scrambled eggs into smaller pieces ( once again, no lumps or chunks in the rice ). Switch off the flame and set aside.

5.In a wok or large pan, heat the vegetable oil, make sure you coat the entire pan. Add the chopped onions first and wait for them to cook and turn translucent. This entire dish needs to be cooked on a high flame so make sure you are constantly stirring and that nothing gets stuck or burnt. From time to time you make lower the flame but as far as possible try to cook on a high flame.

6. Add  HALF the spring onion, pork sausages, chopped garlic, the carrots and celery ( the stick ) and toss them for about a minute. At this stage we only add some so that it cooks and then the rest a little later.

7. Add HALF the amount of cooked rice and start folding the veggies into it. Toss it about so that the vegetables mix with the rice.

8. Add the remaining pork sausages (add the oil or juice that it released ( if any ) while frying as well, add the remaining vegetables ( celery leaves also ) and then slowly the rest of the rice and mix them together. You need to constantly stir and toss so it mixes well, the rice heats up and so that nothing sticks to the pan.

9. Add the soy sauce ( approx 2 table spoons full ) but as much as you like ( keep tasting please don’t over do it and make it too salty. Also add the fish sauce ( about a table spoon ) again according to taste and mix them well. The soy and fish sauce will give it some colour.

10. Add a little more soy if required and a dash of the cooking wine. Also about a teaspoon of sesame oil for flavour. Add the scrambled eggs and mix it all well.

Make sure the rice is nice and hot, taste some to see if the soy has mixed well and you like the balance of flavours and only then serve.

Notes –

This is supposed to be cooked on a high flame so keep that in mind. It needs to CONSTANTLY BE STIRRED so nothing sticks to the pan.

You can cook the rice and then make this or you can use left over rice which is ideal. Remember rice you take out from the fridge is cold and will take time to heat up in the wok, so keep cooking or rather tossing and stirring till it heats up.

The recipe doesn’t ask for celery it’s actually bean sprouts but I think celery is a wonderful ingredient so I switched them. You can use bean sprouts and even coriander to garnish if you like.

It is ideal to use pork bits but it’s a pain to clean and cut, I think sausages are the perfect solution.