What's the best rice for fried rice? | Chinese Cooking Demystified

Quick one today - we figured that we should definitely cover the topic of steaming rice for frying rice. Generally, people will use day old leftover rice for fried rice - works perfectly well, but steamed rice has some advantages:

- You can use freshly cooked rice for your fried rice
- Steamed rice is easier - and a bit quicker - to fry
- The fried rice does not have small clumps
- Because you jostle it around alot less when frying, it helps maintain the integrity of the grains

Make no mistake: using day old rice is still a perfectly delicious and valid approach. But for all the above reasons, steamed rice is just a little... better.

And as we promised in the video, here's the uncut (and uncolored, and inside lol) video of making the fried rice with a non-stick skillet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZpJ8xumFnk

HOW TO STEAM RICE

We used 150g of Jasmine Rice (泰国香米).

1. Rinse the rice 3-4 times until the water loses about half of its opacity.

2. Par-boil for ~3 minutes, or until the grain becomes white and the water becomes cloudy. Be sure to stir as you add the rice into the boiling water, else it'll stick to the bottom.

3. Strain. Immediately move over to your steamer, lay on a wet cloth. Poke a few holes in the rice to let it steam evenly.

4. Steam over high for 10 minutes. Shut off the heat. Let it sit over the hot water for another 5 minutes.

5. Fluff, then lay out on a plate to cool down a touch. It'll be ready to go in 15-20 minutes.

The nice thing about steamed rice is that you can really lay as much rice as'll fit in your steamer. Traditionally there's be these big steaming buckets that can really feed a family or a restaurant. Chinese style steaming buckets seem a bit over-priced on Amazon, but you could also use a Thai style one and just lay a cloth over the top of it as a lid.

And of course, if you want to use leftover steamed rice as fried rice the next day, that's also great.

HOW TO MAKE A BASIC EGG FRIED RICE

Nothing fancy here. Using the rice quantity from above - 150g dried, which works out to ~250g steamed rice.

1. Longyau - get your wok piping hot, shut off the heat, add in the oil (here we used ~1 tbsp lard), and give it a swirl to get a non-stick surface.

2. Flame on medium, heat the oil up til it can bubble around a pair of chopsticks, then toss in one thoroughly beaten egg. Give a quick scramble, scooch up the side of the wok.

3. Up the flame to high. Add the steamed rice, stir fry together with the egg for ~1 minute, or until the rice can reasonably flow off your spatula.

4. Season with 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp sugar, 1/8 tsp white pepper powder, sprinkle of MSG. Quick mix.

5. Add in some sliced scallions. Quick mix, heat off, out.

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Outro Music: คิดถึงคุณจัง by ธานินทร์ อินทรเทพ
Found via My Analog Journal (great channel): https://youtu.be/GHaL5H-VYRg