Leftover Rice Fried Rice

Ya’ll are familiar with the leftover rice dilemma.  You know, when you get takeout Chinese food and you eat all of the good stuff but you have a bunch of plain white rice leftover because they always give way too much?  Well, leftover white rice is a little more useful than you’ve been giving it credit for.  You see, it never seemed appealing before because it was all hard and crusty and starchy, but when you cook it up right and add in some vegetables and scrambled egg, you’ll never know why you used to always give that rice to the dog!

If you’re anything like me, you get a thrill from being crafty and trying to make the most of the ingredients that you have in the fridge without wasting anything.  This is the perfect chance to do so – use whatever is starting to get wrinkly in the fridge and bring it to life with some soy sauce!

You see, fried rice absolutely LOVES to be made out of previously chilled rice.  Even when I am making fried rice completely from scratch, I always refrigerate the white rice for a while before frying it.  Just seems to work best that way!

So I’m going to tell you the ingredients that I used to make this dish in the picture, but don’t let my ingredients limit you.  Remember, the point of this whole thing is to get creative with the stuff that you have laying around… not just the stuff that I had laying around.  I haven’t met a vegetable yet that doesn’t taste good in fried rice!

What will you need?

2 cups leftover white rice

2 eggs, scrambled

1/2 large yellow onion

2 green onions (for garnish)

2 cups chopped vegetables (I used carrots, mushrooms, zucchini)

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1 tsp ground ginger

1/4 c vegetable oil

1/4 cup soy sauce

Salt, pepper

How do you make it?

In a large skillet, heat half of your vegetable oil.  Add in the onions, garlic, salt, pepper, ground ginger and any vegetables that take a bit longer to cook, such as bell peppers, mini corns, etc.  In this case, it was carrots. Stir frequently to avoid burning the onions or garlic.

Sautee this mixture for about 5 minutes until the hardest vegetables start to get soft.  At that point, add in the softer vegetables (zucchini and mushrooms) and continue to cook until everything is soft and nice.

Meanwhile, in a separate skillet, make your scrambled eggs but do NOT cook until completely done.  We want those eggs to be nice and fluffy and they’ll cook more once you add them to the rice mixture!

Once the vegetables are done, remove them from the skillet at set to the side.  Using the same skillet, add the remaining oil and drop in your rice.  Fry it for about 3 minutes and then add in your soy sauce, continuing to cook.   Then add your vegetables on top and mix the whole thing together.

Once you think everything is just about done, add your eggs in just in time for them to get reheated a bit.

Put it all into a bowl and garnish with some chopped green onions (scallions) and serve while still nice and steamy

I feel like this photo is kind of  a lie… I definitely can’t eat with chopsticks.