Tag: fried rice

Salted Fish and Chicken Fried Rice

This is just about one of my favorite fried rice dishes.  And three months ago I had never heard of it.  I went into a Malaysian/Thai restaurant I go to now and then and saw this on the menu.  They had three “salted fish” dishes and this one was recommended by our waiter so I ordered it.  And I was amazed at how delicious and simple it was.  Nothing haute cuisine-ish.  Just delicious taste without being fishy.  So I set out to duplicate this at home since I loved it so much.  I spent weeks researching ingredients and testing things.  And I will tell you I made some dreadful mistakes.  What you see here is the correct recipe with the bugs worked out.

The most important ingredient to mention here is the salted fish.  The dish gets a LOT of flavor from this one ingredient and if you don’t get the right salted fish, it will be a disaster.  Online research was very little help in this area so I had to go out and experiment.

What you see here is the correct ingredient though you might also find it in chunks without the skin.  What I have above is dried, salted Yellow Croaker.  It is the whole fish gutted and then dehydrated.  The meat has the texture of stringy beef jerky and a mellow salty fish taste.  It is not putrid smelling but it does smell like fish.  To use this, you peel the flesh off of the skin which will have (the skin) a firm leathery texture.  After peeling off about a dry measure cup of loose dried meat, you will want to mince it with a sharp knife.

What you see above is your dried, salted fish removed from the skin and minced.  If you can find it without the skin that is fine.  But I love what I have here despite it looking creepy because I know what I have here was made by the staff at this farmers market and therefore fresh and quality controlled.  And when I say it looks creepy – check the image below for what the dried fish looks like flipped over…

So with this ingredient explained and prepared, lets move onto the rest of the pieces.

Here we have day old long grain Jasmine rice cooked in a rice cooker and then refrigerated overnight.  I wet my hands and broke up the clumps into individual grains of rice to make what you see here. You want the grains as separate as possible before frying.

Above I have everything except for the fried rice sauce.  Starting with the oil and going clockwise, we have vegetable oil, thin slices of chicken tenderloins, 3 eggs beaten, minced garlic, cut snow pea pods, scallions and the flower buds from Chinese chives, green romaine lettuce minced into strips, minced salted fish, frozen vegetable mix and finally our rice in the center.

I get my wok burner very hot and preheat my oil.  But before I start cooking after the oil gets hot, I lower this heat to about 20%.

After the heat is lowered, I toss in my garlic and salted fish.  Gently fry these ingredients.  If you start smelling anything burning, drastically reduce the heat.  This dish is ruined if you burn any part of it.  In making this, my blast furnace of a wok burner is actually a handicap.  I had to be very careful here.  After you fry the fish and garlic for 20 seconds, move them aside and add the eggs and scramble them.

After the eggs are scrambled, add your chicken and start stirring well.  keep the food moving to avoid burning anything.  After this, I add my scallions and chive buds and snow pea pods.  Get the pods coated well with oil.

After the pea pods cook for about 15 seconds, add the rice.  Turn up the burner to about 30-40% and keep cooking.  Again if you even smell the hint of burning, back the heat off.  Dump in the frozen vegetables and the romaine lettuce.  You may be asking yourself what the romaine lettuce is for.  The salted fish is dry.  Mixing this food around here, the romaine will give up its moisture and help steam the fish.  It will make it a little softer so it’s not so much like beef jerky and the romaine also helps keep the moisture well balanced within the rice.  It seems strange but trust me, it works!

Carefully add the fried rice sauce, pouring in a spiral and mix well.  After another 45 seconds or so, remove the wok from the heat.

Move the rice to a large serving bowl.

Once again, without any ceremony or rituals my son does the taste test for me.  He likes this as much as I do.

And here is mine with hot peppers and fish sauce added to season.  I am so happy I was able to reverse engineer this dish to find out what was in it and make it myself.  This is not an especially sweet dish – mostly savory.  And unless you add hot peppers, it’s very mild too.  But what it lacks in peppery heat it more than makes of for in flavor!  Despite being full of salted fish, it does NOT have a fishy flavor at all.  Even people with an aversion to seafood flavors will be able to handle this dish.

Salted Fish and Chicken Fried Rice (serves 6-8 as a main course)

Ingredients:

  • 4 dry measure cups of uncooked Jasmine long grain rice
  • 3/4 lb thin chicken filets cut into strips
  • 1 dry measure cup minced salted dried fish
  • 5 garlic cloves minced
  • 3 large eggs beaten
  • 1 cup snow pea pods cut in half
  • 1 cup scallions
  • 3 tablespoons chinese chive flower buds (optional)
  • 1/2 cup romain lettuce greens minced into small strips
  • 3/4 cup frozen mixed vegetables
  • 4 tablespoons vegetable oil

Sauce

  • 3 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 2 tablespoons white vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons fish sauce
  • 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
  • 3 tablespoons water

Preparation:

  • Cook the 4 cups of Jasmine rice the day before and refrigerate overnight
  • Wet hands and break the rice into individual grains.
  • Mix the sauce ingredients in a small bowl well
  • Heat the vegetable oil over high heat in a wok.
  • When the oil starts to smoke, lower the heat by 70% and add the garlic and dried fish.
  • Fry gently, stirring carefully as not to break up the pieces of fish.
  • Move the garlic and fish up the side of the wok some and pour in the eggs
  • Scramble the eggs
  • Add the chicken and stir well with the other ingredients until the chicken starts turning opaque.
  • Add the snow pea pods and stir, frying gently.
  • Add the chive buds and scallions.  Stir well.
  • Increase the heat to 40%
  • Add the rice and if needed, add a little more oil to the center of the wok.  Stir well.
  • Add the frozen vegetables and the lettuce strips and mix well.
  • Pour in the fried rice sauce carefully in a spiral and stir well.
  • Cook another 45 seconds and remove from heat.
  • Put into a large bowl and serve.
  • Provide chopped peppers and fish sauce as desired.

Enjoy!!

Suburbanwok

 

Thai Pork Fried Rice

Getting back to the Asian recipes, I am going to show how I make my fried rice.  There are at least a dozen times as many varieties of fried rice as there are countries that make it.  And they all taste very differently from one another and yet there some techniques to cooking that are common to all of them.  The dish I am going to share today is Pork Fried Rice cooked the way it might be in Thailand.  I say might because there are so many ways this dish can be prepared even with that title.  As Chinese Pork Fried Rice is the pork fried rice dish most people are familiar with, it is the one most people use as a reference and indeed will compare this one to.  There will be differences between Chinese pork fried rice and Thai – one big one being the pork is often dyed red and sliced differently in China.  The other being that very fragrant and flavorful Thai basil is present in the Thai version.

The preparation actually starts a day in advance.  I will cook 2 dry measure cups of Jasmine rice in my rice cooker and then allow it to cool, covered.  After that, put it in the refrigerator overnight.  The following day, I will take the rice out, wet my hands and break up the clumps into individual grains of rice.  I choose Jasmine because Japanese rice is a poor choice as it sticks together readily even the next day.  If you go to a Japanese restaurant and you sit at the Hibachi grill, next time you are there look at the rice they give people when they ask for steamed.  It’s probably Nishiki or Calrose medium grain (both low cost Japanese style rices).  But when the chef starts to fry the rice on the grill after he does his egg trick, you will note he has long grain rice he dumps out on the heated surface.  In most of these restaurant they use previously parboiled rice because it separates very easily and they don’t have to mess with the rice as much by hand.  That’s right.  Your favorite Japanese Hibachi joint makes your fried rice with Minute Rice!

Friedrice

Above I have my ingredients, minus the oil, Chinese white pepper and the eggs.  Starting from the rice and working clockwise in a spiral we have precooked, chilled Jasmine rice, my fried rice sauce (recipe below), shrimp powder, chopped red spanish onion, minced garlic, mixed vegetables (peas, carrots, lima beans, corn and green beans), diced pork (butterfly pork chops cut into bite sized pieces), Thai basil and snow pea pods in the center.

Like most dishes I start by firing up my burner and heating up my wok.  I put the burner at about 60% as ultra high heat is not needed here and may even burn the rice.  So for those of you that don’t have wok burners – you can make this dish taste just as good on an indoor stove.   For this recipe I use my 18″ Cantonese wok as this makes a lot of food.   When the oil starts to shimmer with heat, we put in the beaten eggs.

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Scramble the eggs just until they are no longer runny and add the pork.

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We want to cook the pork until it is white all over.

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Add the garlic and onions and stir fry until fragrant.  Even on lower heat, the wok gets very hot as low heat on this burner is still 50,000 BTU.  Lots of steam.

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After the pork is cooked, add all the vegetables except the snow pea pods and Thai basil and stir.

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I add the snow peas and stir these in.  You want them coated lightly with oil.  The trick here is to flash cook everything.  That is – the outside of the vegetable pieces cook and the inside are still a little raw and full of vitamins.  You want that crispness and fresh flavor.

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Now for the most savory ingredient in this dish and one that will clearly distinguish this as being Thai – the Thai basil.  You want to cook this until the basil is wilted before adding the rice.

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Add the rice and mix well.  Now the rice frying begins in earnest.  You want to stir well but don’t overdo it or you will break too many of the grains.  You want the rice to mix with what little oil may be left.  At this point I add a teaspoon of dried shrimp powder and 1/2 teaspoon of ground Chinese white pepper sprinkled over the top.

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After the rice has cooked maybe 5-6 minutes I like to add my fried rice sauce.  I will pour in a spiral and use maybe 3/4 cup to 1 cup.  You do not want ANY loose liquid pooling.  Everything you pour in should be absorbed by the rice with a quick stir.

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Now it looks like a fried rice, doesn’t it?  The sauce gives the rice its tan color which is really a trademark of fried rice in any Asian country.  At this point it’s done and ready to be served.  I like to take it out of the wok and put in a large bowl to serve from.

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For most people this meal would be ready to eat.  And for the rest of my family, it was and their the plates looked like the above.  But for me – it needs three more things to be truly Thai.

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A fried egg on top is a signature Thai move.  You want to fry at high heat so the whites get a little crispy around the edges and the yolk inside still crawls over the rice when the skin is broken.

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Lastly I sprinkle some cilantro over the top and then spoon some Prik Nam Pla over the meal to season it as desired.  I like a lot of hot pepper but adding the things that make me happy occur after it is done is fine and does not lessen the enjoyment of the other diners of this dish.  One thing that differs greatly between countries own fried rice dishes will be the composition of the fried rice sauce.  So you can make this, the recipe is below.

Thai Pork Fried Rice (serves 4-6 as a main dish):

  • 4-5 Tbs peanut oil
  • Day old cooked rice made from 2 cups of uncooked Jasmine rice.
  • 3/4 lb butterfly pork chops cut into bite sized chunks.
  • Two eggs beaten.
  • 1 cup Thai basil
  • 1 1/2 cups mixed vegetables (peas, carrots, beans)
  • 1 cup snow pea pods
  • One medium onion chopped (you can substitute 4 scallions chopped if desired)
  • 3 tablespoons minced garlic
  • 1 tsp dried shrimp powder (optional)
  • 1/2 tsp fresh ground white Chinese pepper

Sauce ingredients:

  • 2 Tbs sweet soy sauce
  • 1 Tbs Golden Mountain sauce
  • 1 Tbs soy sauce
  • 3 Tbs Fish sauce
  • 4 Tbs oyster sauce
  • 2 Tbs white or rice vinegar
  • 1 Tbs corn starch
  • 2 Tbs water

Preparation:

  • Heat oil in a wok or large flat bottom pan until the oil is hot.
  • Add the beaten eggs and scramble.
  • Add the pork and stir fry until the pieces are opaque.
  • Stir in the onion and garlic.
  • Add the mixed vegetables and stir well.
  • Stir in the Thai basil and sweat the leaves until they wilt and shrink up.
  • Stir in the snow pea pods to coat with oil.
  • Add the rice and mix well.  You will want to fry this for about 5 minutes stirring occasionally.  You want the rice to cook in the oil some.
  • In a spiralling motion twirling in, pour some of the fried rice sauce over the rice and stir.  Add more if all the rice kernels don’t get that beige color.
  • Sprinkle the shrimp powder (if using) and the Chinese pepper over the rice and give one more stir.
  • Remove from heat and put into a large serving bowl.
  • Garnish plates with cilantro, sliced cucumber and tomato wedges.
  • Add an over easy-medium fried egg on top of each dish if desired.
  • Serve with Nam Pla Prik.

This is one of those dishes that got its start with people wondering what to do with leftover rice.  The cult just grew from there.  I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I.

Suburbanwok