Using Oil for Deep Frying

People think that deep-fried foods are unhealthy. It’s greasy, they say, loaded with fat or loaded with cholesterol. People say all kinds of things that aren’t true, but if enough people say something stupid then people start to think it’s true anyway. The fact is that deep-frying food is fine as long as you know a little about what you’re doing. The problem is what to do about the used oil.

For years I tended to avoid frying things like chicken or potatoes in a deep fryer because I couldn’t figure out how to re-use the oil. Depending on what you’re cooking, you might use only 1-2 cups of oil, or you might use 4 cups of oil. Even though oil isn’t all that expensive, I just didn’t like the idea of using all that cooking oil once then throwing it away. Of course the solution would be to strain and clean the oil, but that took forever.

The Right Way to Deep Fry

First of all, that alleged “greasy” reputation wrongly given to Chinese food is usually sesame oil. It’s there on purpose, in the same way that you have an oil and vinaigrette dressing on a salad. You wouldn’t turn up your nose and say that a salad is greasy, right?

Secondly, most people think they’re getting the right temperature when they use their stove to fry something in oil. In almost all cases, stove-top burners at home don’t have enough energy to keep frying oil at 350° much less the 375° you’ll want for crispy, non-oily chicken or fish. Use a frying thermometer and watch how quickly you lose heat when you add in the food. Then see how it barely creeps back to 325°, even on the high setting.

• Commercial stoves and deep fryers produce more BTUs of energy than home appliances.
• A home appliance fryer should have the capability to reach 400“ in order to sustain 375° during the frying process (more likely 350°, which is fine, but 375° is crispier).

Deep frying in a coating, or particularly in a batter is a unique way to preserve moisture in food. The high temperature of the hot oil instantly cauterizes that outer batter. That creates an air-tight seal around the food, trapping the juices and many nutrients inside the food. The result is moist, juicy and very flavorful.

• One symptom of wrongly cooked fried food is that it’s dry.
• Another symptom is that there’s a lot of oil when you place the food on a paper towel or drain rack.
• Other than letting some oil drip off the food as you remove it from the oil, there should be very little oil on the plate or in your mouth.

Incorrect frying does two things. First, it doesn’t seal the outer coating, allowing water and steam to escape. That leads to sputtering and popping, and a very loud “sizzle” sound. People think that’s a good thing. No, it’s a bad thing! Secondly, because it’s taking too long to seal the batter, oil seeps into the coating leaving a lot of oil and grease on the final product.

To instantly seal off the food and batter, the oil has to be at the proper temperature. That’s the problem, because inexpensive electric fryers almost immediately lose anywhere from 50-100 degrees of oil temperature when you put in the food.

• Always have your food as dry as possible, just prior to putting it into the oil.
• Bring the food to room temperature prior to frying, but don’t let it sit around warm (particularly for chicken)

It’s easy, really. All you have to do is take the food out of the fridge an hour or so before you’re ready to fry it. Since it takes around 15 minutes to bring oil to the right temperature, and you’re often preparing a batter or coating, you’re really only talking about half an hour ahead of time to remove the food from the fridge.

Chicken doesn’t magically “catch” salmonellae out of the blue! Most chicken is pretty clean, what with FDA inspections and so forth. If it’s clean and purchased from a reputable store, and it isn’t past the expiration date, then you don’t have to treat chicken like it’s a hazardous material! There’s no problem at all with allowing it to warm to room temperature, just prior to cooking.

Plus, bacteria is killed when it’s subjected to high heat. That’s why cooking food is a good thing!

Steam is the Enemy

Have you ever deep fried chicken in a batter, then had the coating slide off the food when you go to eat it? The bond between the batter or coating, and the food was broken by steam. The juices in the food almost instantly become super-heated when the food enters the oil, producing a miniature explosion. That pushes the batter/coating away from the surface of the food.

To prevent this from happening, you want your food to be as dry as possible on the surface, prior to coating it with a batter.

• To fry vegetables (e.g., eggplant, onion rings, etc.) dredge in flour and let sit prior to coating with batter.
• Lightly coat meat, fish or poultry with a bit of flour prior to dipping in batter.
• Pack moist fillings tightly, as in egg rolls or wontons prior to frying.

When it comes to egg rolls, which use cooked cabbage and have some moisture, the trick is to pack the filling tightly in the skins. In this case, the problem becomes steam build-up inside the egg roll. That puffs the skin away from the filling, leading to soggy egg rolls. I tend to pan-fry egg rolls rather than deep fry them, to allow steam to escape from the top, which isn’t covered in oil.

Best Way to Clean Frying Oil

A lot of Asian food involves deep frying, so once again, as I started learning how to replicate Chinese restaurant dishes I needed a way to work with oil. Many people use cheesecloth, but that’s expensive if you use it regularly. Other people use coffee filters, but that’ll sit overnight most of the time. Then there are home appliance units that will strain the oil, and that also takes hours and hours.

I ran across a post, somewhere:

• Use a plain paper towel in a regular household strainer to clean and recover used oil. Perfect!

This trick works best with the oil a little bit warm, maybe around 225-degrees, but I’ve found that it works just as well when the oil is room temperature. Just put a paper towel in a regular strainer, lay the strainer over a deep bowl, then pour the oil into the strainer. It drains very quickly and filters out all but the tiniest particles. The result is easily re-usable, and you’re done in minutes instead of hours!

• Store used oil in an air-tight container. It’s the air that causes oil to go rancid, like oxygen causes rust on metal.

How Many Times Can You Use Oil?

Each time you fry with the same oil, the smoke point goes lower. This is the point at which the oil begins to burn. The smoke point temperature is used to measure the capabilities of different types of oil. The lower the degree, the more delicate is the oil. The higher the smoke point, the better it will handle high-temperature frying.

Vegetable oil and peanut oil both have high smoke points, and can easily tolerate the 375° F temperatures used in typical frying. The other typical temperature is 350° F, which is still too high for things like olive oil. That’s not to say that you can’t use olive oil in a pan for pan-fried this or that, you just don’t use olive oil for deep-fried chicken.

The oil begins to break down under high temperatures, so when it cools it tends to have a lower smoke point. That being said, you can usually use the same oil about 4-5 times. You’ll see the oil get darker, depending on what you’re frying, and you’ll eventually notice an odor of burning oil.

If you’re frying something that doesn’t produce small particles, for example potatoes or vegetables, the oil will remain mostly clear. That you can certainly use 4-5 times. On the other hand, if you fry chicken with a batter or flour coating, then you’ll probably only get away with 2-3 times.

Something else to consider: French fries. When you buy fries at a fast-food place, they’ve been using the oil many times during the day. The flavor that blends into the hot oil then transfers back to the fried food. Used oil is often better for fries than clean oil. You get better browning, and you get additional flavor.

You probably wouldn’t want to use oil in which you’ve fried fish to then fry vegetables. Nor would you fry shrimp, then fry chicken in the same oil. Depends on your taste buds, but remember there’ll be some transfer of flavor from different types of foods. That’s not always a bad thing. In some cases it’s a good thing!

Don’t add a lot of new oil to previously used oil. Some is okay, but no more than about half the existing volume. The used oil lowers the smoke point of the new oil.

• Don’t mix two different kinds of oil when deep frying. So don’t have some leftover vegetable oil, then toss in some olive oil just because you want to finish off a bottle.

What Kind of OIl?

Because of all this health stuff that’s been going around, a lot of people think that Canola oil is very healthy for you. Indeed, it actually is pretty good when used cold, like for salad dressing. But under high heat, canola oil not only breaks down, its physical properties begin to change. You end up with a lot of trans fats and hydrogenated oil, none of which is healthy or good for you. There’s also the unexamined aspect that we’re seeing more genetically modified canola, and we don’t really know the long-term problems that might be related.

The two best kinds of oil to use are regular vegetable oil or peanut oil. Plain corn oil is decent as well, but the cost of vegetable oil makes it practical. Many people think that all Chinese frying is done with peanut oil. It isn’t. More often than not, it’s vegetable oil.

Peanut oil has a distinct flavor, which of course transfers to the food. If you can afford it, then peanut oil works very well for egg rolls, fried shrimp, or wontons. It’s also excellent for Swiss fondues. But when you’re just frying something for crispiness, like fried pork for sweet-and-sour pork, don’t bother. The oil flavor will be lost in the sauces, so vegetable oil is the most cost effective.

Disposing of Old Oil

You don’t want to throw old cooking oil down your drain. It gunks up the pipes, puts a coating on everything, eventually goes rancid and starts to smell. So what do you do with it? If you just toss 3 cups of oil in your trash bag, it leaks everywhere and makes a mess.

As you get more interested in deep frying, reclaiming oil and using it more than one time, you’ll probably start buying oil in gallon jugs. It’s inexpensive (vegetable oil), doesn’t take all that much room, and you easily can fry all sorts of things. Just keep the empty jug. It has a cap, it’s heavy plastic, and you can pour old oil into the empty jug until it’s full. Then throw away the jug (with the cap screwed on nicely).

Alright, but what do you do with the oil you want to toss BEFORE you have the empty jug? Zip-Loc bags! Even with a large fryer and a whole chicken, you likely won’t use more than about 3-4 cups of oil. And remember, you’ll be cleaning that oil then using some of it for smaller frying jobs. When you’re done, take a 1-quart zipper-type plastic bag and rest it in a bowl.

The reason for resting it in the bowl is to support the sides as you pour in the old oil. Zip it up and toss it in the trash. Easy and clean. Another option is to save a couple of old mayonnaise jars, bottled water containers, soda jugs or any other container with a re-closeable top. Use a funnel, pour the old oil in the bottle or container, and toss. We happen to like Planter’s peanuts, so we keep those containers. They’ll hold 2 cups of oil, which is just what you want to fry chicken in a pan.

Tip — Washing the Dishes

One of the best all-around household cleaners I’ve found is Castrol SuperClean. It’s an automotive degreaser, and it works superbly for the kitchen and just about anything else that’s hard to clean. It particularly removes built-up cigarette smoke residue from things like plastic, glass, computer cases and closet doors. Venetian blinds, mini-blinds, stove-tops: Stuff like that. It also makes cleaning up frying oil very simple.

The nice thing about a degreaser is that it dissolves oil on contact. Wipe out a frying pan, spray some of this on the pan, then wash it. (I don’t have a dishwasher, and have to do dishes by hand.) For deep fryers that won’t safely go into an automatic dishwasher, this will clean out the inside. Then you can put a dab of dish liquid in there, some water, wash it and rinse, and you’re done.

You can buy the spray bottle, and usually the 1-gallon refills at many hardware stores (we have Ace Hardware around here). It’s also available at Wal-Mart and many automotive supply stores. Look in the automotive section for the purple container. A little goes a long way, so it’s worth the money!

Summary

Use a good quality, absorbent paper towel to make life tremendously more enjoyable when it comes to straining oil for using it again. Recovering oil after frying makes it a whole lot more cost effective to enjoy deep fried foods.

A nice shortening to use for pan frying is regular Crisco. The way that’s manufactured, you get a clean oil when it’s melted, without the bad chemistry. Additionally, when it cools down again it re-solidifies, making it easier to wipe out a pan before washing. Crisco works for pan-fried chicken and food, not for deep frying.

You only need enough oil to float whatever it is you’re frying. So about two times the height of your food. The food should have a bit of room around it, so either use a larger pot or fry less food in each batch.

Finally, a note about butter. It’s WAY healthier for you than margarine! When you examine all the byproducts of margarine, you’ll discover that it’s killing you. Take some time to consider who in particular has been promoting the use of margarine over butter all these past decades. Then do some research on butter. If you continue to margarine or “butter-like spreads,” you’re being very foolish.

Related – Table of Contents for Chinese Take-out

Crab Rangoon – Mini Eggroll Style

Chinese Restaurant-style Cooking – Contents of this Series

When I figured out how to make a replica of beef fried rice, I thought I was done. Talking about it with someone, they mentioned crab Rangoon, so I looked up the recipe for that. Turns out it’s really very simple, except there were some problems. One is that I’m totally Origami challenged, and have major “issues” trying to fold the wontons into the pretty pointed little flower thingies. Secondly, they don’t taste much like crab (never have, actually), more like cream cheese.

If you want classic crab Rangoon, you’re talking about an 8oz package of cream cheese, 4oz of imitation crab, and some chopped tips of green onions. Stick about 1 teaspoon of this filling into a wonton skin, then fold it in some complicated fashion. Fry it for a minute or two, and Wah-Lah…! Done.

Okay, but it still tastes pretty much like cream cheese “dip” of some sort, fried up in a shell. Since I had a better handle on how all these ingredients work together, I decided to mess around with the filling. Here’s what I came up with, and you only have to learn how to roll typical eggrolls. That’s not so easy either, but it’s easier than the Rangoons, in my own estimation.

Note that this video shows how to wrap full-size egg rolls. She uses a Tablespoon of filling. For a miniature eggroll, done in wonton skin, you only need 1 teaspoon of filling. The reason for the video is I haven’t drawn a picture of how to wrap eggrolls yet, so this’ll show you the process.

Ingredients

• 8 oz. package softened cream cheese
• 4 oz. (1/2 package) imitation crab or lobster (flakes, chunks or leg style doesn’t matter)
• 1 oz. grated fresh Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup chopped green onion tips (approximately)
• 1/4 teaspoon (a dash or two) Worcestershire sauce
• Wonton skins

Instructions

1. Place the cream cheese in a bowl and let it warm to room temperature. It’ll be a whole lot easier to mix up the other ingredients when the cream cheese is soft. Seems to me to taste better when it warms naturally, but you could probably use a microwave oven if you had to.
2. Fake crab meat is cheap, and usually comes in 8 oz packages. I only use half a package and that gives a nice flavor and texture. Break it apart a little, then use a fork to mix it in with the cheese.
3. Stir in about 1 oz. of grated Parmesan cheese.
4. Splash in a couple of small dashes of Worcestershire sauce. Not a lot. A little goes a long way!
5. Stir in some green onion tips, cut with scissors to make your life easier. About a half cup, or enough to have some green and bit of flavor.
6. Peel apart a wonton skin, and use your fingertip dipped in water to wet the outer edges.
7. Put about 1 teaspoon of the filling onto the wonton and roll it up like a small eggroll.
8. Fry in about 2 inches of hot oil (350-370 degrees) for about a minute, maybe more; just enough to get crispy.
9. Drain, cool, and serve with sweet-n-sour sauce or mustard sauce.

Summary

What we found was that by adding in the Parmesan cheese and slight amount of Worcestershire sauce, we were able to really bring out the flavor of the crab! The Rangoons I’ve had in a restaurant taste nice, if you like fried wonton skins, but the filling tastes like plain cream cheese. The “crab” vanishes into the hot filling, without leaving behind much taste.

We really did try folding the wontons into those nifty shapes, but we found that more often than not, the filling ended up expanding (okay…exploding) out the top. Rather than screw around with all the extra work, we found that using the typical eggroll wrapping was easier, and it kept the filling inside, where it belongs.

You can make the filling with the soft cream cheese, then cover it and let it sit in the fridge in a bowl. It’s not a problem filling the wontons when the filling’s cold. It’s only a problem making the filling when the cream cheese is cold at the start.

You also can use just a plain table-type teaspoon. It’s not an exact measure! Put in enough to give the wonton some shape. If you put in too much, you’ll have a hard time closing the ends. Too little, and you’ll wonder where the filling went after it’s been cooked. Experience will help, but after about 4 tries you should have it pretty well figured out.

These are totally easy to do, very inexpensive, and one package of cream cheese makes about 25 little eggroll wontons or thereabouts. They freeze nicely, when cooked, and can be either re-fried or better yet, just popped into a 400-degree oven (on a pan or baking sheet) for maybe 5-10 minutes to re-crisp.

Another trick we learned, working in a warm kitchen, is to sprinkle a tiny bit of cornmeal (not cornstarch) on a baking sheet or jelly-roll pan. Then, when each wonton is wrapped, laying it on top of the cornmeal. It helps prevent them from sticking to whatever you’re using to hold them while wrapping them up. Or, you can have one person wrap, and another person deep-fry.

Table of Contents

Making Chinese Restaurant Style Beef Fried Rice

Chinese Restaurant-style Cooking – Contents of this Series

Alright, we’ve come to the crux of the matter; the actual recipes and process for making Chinese menu items like you’ll get in most Chinese-American restaurants. If you haven’t read the other articles, you can check the Table of Contents (another link is at the bottom). Explanations for some of the parts of this dish are in the previous posts. This post is about how to produce beef fried rice that almost exactly matches what you get in cardboard cartons.

I’m not a chef, nor do I intend to be one. As such, I tried to make fried rice all together in a wok, following the videos and instructions I’ve read over the years. It made me nuts! There’s all this stuff going on at once, stuff burned or stuck to the wok, I felt like I was in a race, and so on and so forth. Screw it! You can cook this dish in several different pans, and the worst off you’ll be is that you’ll have a bit more dishes to wash. But you’ll enjoy the dinner better.

What you’ll need: Overnight Preparations

• Day old cooked rice, about 2 to 2-1/2 cups cooked rice, extra long-grain. Don’t worry about being exact, just have around 2 to 3 cups cooked. Cold, broken up without big clumps.
  • You’ll use 2 or so typical, kitchen measuring cups worth of cooked, day-old rice. Don’t pack it real tight, and it can be a little over, with no problem.
  • Just keep cooked rice, uncovered in the fridge for a day or two (stirring with your fingers periodically to break it apart).
• Approx 1 cup (about 6 oz.), loosely placed in the cup, of thin-sliced beef, marinaded for about 4 hours (1 hour absolute least time). For flank or chuck eye steak, 4 hours. For sirloin, 1-2 hours will do.

• Also not critical, just the amount of meat you’d like in your fried rice. (Or shrimp, chicken or pork.)

Note that when you cook the rice, let it sit in the cooker (with the lid on) after it’s done, until it cools. I’ve learned that although rice that sits about 30 minutes is great to eat right away, longer “sitting time” makes even better texture for leftover rice! Yes it takes some time (half an hour soaking, 15-30 minutes cooking, and an hour or so to cool off), but it’s totally worth it! Experiment, and you’ll see.

• The texture of the leftover cooked rice will fundamentally determine the texture of the final, fried rice dish. If at all possible, use an electric rice cooker.
• The cold rice will stick to your fingers a little, as you stir it around and break up clumps. But it should rinse off easily when you run your hands under water.

Prepare the Meat

I like to slice the meat the night before, put it in a small bowl without the marinade, and cover with plastic wrap. That way, the next afternoon I can just whip up the marinade, pour it on the meat, stir it around and put it back in the fridge until dinner.

Another option is to slice up the meat, and marinade it for an hour or four. Divide into 1-cup (3-4 oz.) portions and wrap in plastic wrap. Freeze the pouches in a bag. When you want to make fried rice, just thaw one of the portions of raw, marinaded meat and fry it up. Since I’ve been making this, I’ve learned that anything past 1 hour is fine. I’ve let the meat marinade for a couple of days, and it doesn’t break down. The soy sauce and wine (acid) are tenderizing it, and there aren’t any enzymes. So don’t worry about time, other than let it go at least one hour.

1. About 3-4 oz. of flank steak or sirloin steak that starts out about 1-inch thick. Less is okay, it depends on how much you like meat in your fried rice. (We like “grill steaks,” a cut we found in Mexican supermarkets, but any tender beef will work.) You’re going to shave it thin, so the original thickness will become the “width” of the thin slices.
2. Remove the fat – Fat isn’t useful in thin slices of meat. Flank steak doesn’t have much fat at all. Sirloin, remove the outer bits and any gristle.
3. Slice into thin pieces, approximately 3-inches long and about 1/8″ to 1/4″ thick. (If the steak you find is thicker than about 1 inch, still make the slices, but cut them again length-wise. If it’s a little thin steak, then make the slices a bit thicker. You’ve had beef in fried rice, so just make it look that way.)
4. Place sliced meat into small bowl and cover with all-purpose marinade. Include the sugar the first time, then see how you like it as you reduce out the sugar slowly in future versions.
   • 1 TBsp cornstarch
   • 1 tsp sugar
   • 1 TBsp Rice Cooking Wine
   • 2 TBsp Soy Sauce (light, regular — like Kikkoman, but NOT sodium free!)
5. Mix together in a small, separate bowl or cup:Pour over meat, then stir one or two times with your fingers, making sure each piece is nicely coated as it marinades in the fridge. Alternately, you can mix up the marinade in a small bowl, then add the meat to the marinade.
6. Cover with plastic wrap or foil, and keep in the fridge until cooking time, 1-4 hours depending on the meat.

Note that when you’ve made this version, you can replace the beef with pieces of shrimp (won’t need marinade), or with pork. If you use shrimp, cook it first to get the water out. If it’s already cooked, thaw it out, then dry it nicely on paper towels. Cut the shrimp into pieces, or use small shrimp.

The key to many Chinese dishes is DRY! The liquids involved are soy sauce, or sweet-n-sour sauce, or oils. So get the water out of the shrimp before adding it to fried rice.

If you use pork, use shoulder roast or country ribs, remove the fat (as best you can) and slice the pork into thin strips like the beef. Cook it the same way, marinade it the same way. Try not to use pre-cooked leftover meat…it tastes the wrong way, too hard and too dry.

Fried Rice Ingredients:

• 1 Tablespoons vegetable oil for frying eggs, and for frying meat.
• 3 Tablespoons Sesame oil for frying rice, separately from meat and eggs
• 1 Large egg, scrambled (optional; depending on whether you like scrambled eggs in your fried rice)
• 1 handful (about 1 cup) of bean sprouts (fresh, preferably, or from a bag)
• 1 TBsp light (regular) Soy Sauce first.
• 1 teaspoon Dark Soy sauce (see “Ingredients“), about 2 teaspoons or so.
• A handful of chopped green onion tips (about 1/3 cup)

Note that you can buy fried rice with or without scrambled eggs. I usually see it with the eggs, but my lady friend doesn’t like eggs. So we use 1 egg, but she picks out the pieces and I eat them. If you don’t like eggs, you don’t have to use any. But stick with only 1, not more than that.

Note also that many restaurants will include a handful of sweet peas. You can buy a bag of frozen peas, and toss in a handful that have thawed to room temperature, at the end of the process, to heat them up. They’re mostly cooked already, then frozen, so they don’t need more right from the bag than just to be heated.

Finally, you can use peanut oil if you want, and that has a very nice flavor! But it’s expensive, compared to regular vegetable oil. That, and excepting with wontons or egg rolls, I don’t notice all that much difference in fried rice. Don’t use canola oil, as it breaks down when heated and makes for bad stuff you don’t want in your system. Besides, vegetable oil is cheap.

• The Sesame oil is critical, though! It’s not that expensive, and lasts a long time. Don’t get the “smokey” oil, get the clear, yellow-ish oil. This is for cooking, not salad dressing. Look in the Indian food section of the store, if you have one, and you might find less expensive sesame oil than in the regular oil section. (Brand name SWAD around here in Chicago.)

Instructions:

In a small bowl, snip off some tips of green onions with scissors. Not a lot, about 1/4 cup (2 TBsp). Set near stove and keep handy.

In a separate “pinch bowl” measure out 1 TBsp + 1 teaspoon regular soy sauce. Add 1 teaspoons dark soy sauce. You’ll be pouring it all in quickly at the end, and it’s annoying to have to measure at that point. Set near stove and keep handy.

1. Scramble the egg – The way I do it, I use a 10-inch separate pan, but you can do this in the wok if you’re prepared to wipe out the wok when you’re done.Put about 1 TBsp of oil in the pan to heat on medium. Scramble 1 Large egg in a small bowl. Dump it into the hot oil, scramble it, then remove it back to the small bowl. Cut into small pieces, and set aside. (Takes about a minute.)
2. Fry the Meat– In the pan you just used for the eggs, fry the meat. You can add a spritz of oil if you want. Your marinaded meat will have a small amount of cornstarch coating, which will make it a bit thick and sticky. Therefore, I fry the meat in a bit of oil on its own, over medium heat. If I’m in the mood, I’ll fry it in the wok, but it really does make a mess on the bottom. Just dump it all into a pan and fry it. It won’t get crispy brown, what with the marinade, so don’t worry about it “boiling” or “steaming.” It’s the texture that’ll matter. The Asians call this “velveting,” if they use baking soda, but we’re doing something similar with the cornstarch and no baking soda.
   • The meat will take a few minutes, to go from pink to cooked. It’s beef, so you don’t need to worry if some of it’s a bit rare, but why bother? Just cook it and stir it around until it’s all brown.
3. Steam the Bean Sprouts (with meat) – When the meat is basically cooked (about 2-3 minutes, not much pink visible), toss a handful of bean sprouts on top. This does two things: First, it pre-cooks and softens the bean sprouts. Secondly, the liquid from the sprouts helps to de-glaze the bottom of the pan. Stir it all around.
   • Sprinkle some soy sauce on the meat and bean sprouts. Not a lot, but enough to give some saltiness to the sprouts. Just a spritz. Otherwise, you’ll want to add too much soy to the final mixture with the rice, or you’ll want to add salt at the table, and that won’t taste quite right.
   • The sprouts are done when they’re just wilted, not stiff. They shouldn’t disappear in the fried rice, just be soft enough to notice them.
4. Drain & Set aside Meat and Sprouts – You can just pour the whole combination into its own bowl, and whatever juices and water go along with them. Using a small bowl lets the juices fall to the bottom. The key is to let them drain so you won’t be adding any more liquid when you put the meat and sprouts in at the end. Set them aside.

Fry 2 Cups Cold, Day-Old Rice

You can keep the rice in the fridge until this point. Alternately, after you’ve dried it out, you can put 2 to 2-1/2 cups of dried, day-old rice in a freezer bag and freeze it for months. Same with the marinaded raw meat, they’ll both keep for months and can make it easy when cooking the fried rice “on demand.”

Here’s where a 14″ wok really comes in handy!

• Put into the wok TWO (2) TBsp of Sesame oil. Not more! Only 2 Tablespoons! Not more!

Use a high heat and let the oil heat up at the bottom of the wok until it just starts smoking. When you see a bit of smoke, it’s ready.

Swirl the oil around to coat the sides of the wok. You want only enough oil to barely cover each grain of rice. Only 2 TBsps!

• Dump in your 2 cups of cooked (cold) rice, from right out of the fridge into the wok.
• Use your wok stirring spatula to stir the rice around. At first, let it sit and sizzle, then start stirring. Stir and turn upside down, ALL the rice! You’ll get a feel for how long to let it sit, or stir, but you literally are frying the rice!
• Your purpose here is twofold: first to coat the rice with sesame oil; secondly, to get the rice heated up. You’ll see the oil starting to coat each grain.
• You’ll hear a bit of sizzling. DO NOT give in to the temptation to add more oil to get a loud sizzle going on! Just coat each grain, then make sure the rice is hot.
• Stir regularly, turning, scraping from the sides, lifting and turning to heat all the rice. About 3 minutes.

Reduce the heat to low-medium.

Add the meat & bean sprouts – Don’t include the juice that will have pooled at the bottom of the bowl. Only the meat and sprouts.

• Use some salt and pepper, sparingly. Stir it all around.

Add Soy Sauce – This is where the real coloring takes place. You’ll have the pre-measured soy mixture in a small bowl, so just drizzle it down the sides of the wok. Stir it around to color and coat the rice. You’ll color the rice tan or brownish, but you don’t want the eggs to be colored.

Turn off the heat

Add Scrambled Egg – The dish is pretty much done by this point, so just toss in the scrambled egg and stir it around.

Add Green Onions – Same thing here, just toss in the raw onions and stir them into the mixture. Notice that by adding the soy sauce earlier, the rice and meat will be nice and brown, but the eggs will remain yellow and the scallions will remain green. (You can toss in your handful of green peas if you like, at this point.)

Sprinkle 1 TBsp Sesame Oil over entire mixture and stir around.

Remove into a serving bowl. You’re done!

What Can Go Wrong

If you use fresh-cooked rice, it’ll get soggy. No doubt about it!

When you cool the rice in the fridge, it’ll feel hard in your mouth if you taste it. It’ll stick between your teeth, and generally not be all that great, particularly if it’s been in the fridge uncovered. But you need that slight amount of dryness so it’ll hold up while frying! It can sit anywhere from 1 – 4 days in the fridge. If you’re going more than a day, put some foil over the bowl.

The leftover rice should be firm and “bouncy,” when it goes into the fridge, but not stuck together grains of rice. After a day or two, it should feel a bit “hard” and only a little sticky. Note that when you open a cardboard container of fried rice from a restaurant, it’s compressed and smooshed together. When you take it out of the container and “fluff” it up, it doesn’t stick together. Dry is good!

Too many pieces of green onion will give too much onion flavor, over-powering the rest of the dish.

Too many bean sprouts, not cooked enough will add an “earthy” flavor to the rice. The sprouts will be too dominant. Don’t use as many next time, and cook them a bit longer with the meat.

Not enough soy sauce during the cooking process will tend to make the final product a bit bland. Too much, and it’ll taste very salty. Rather than measure by tablespooons, it’s better to drizzle in the correct mixture from a small pinch bowl.

• Regular soy sauce is salty.
• Dark soy sauce isn’t as salty, and has a bit of sweetness.
• Use regular (light) soy for seasoning, and dark for coloring.

The meat should melt in your mouth. If it doesn’t, then you didn’t marinade it. Go back and do it again, and this time marinade the meat! If you include too much of the meat marinade or juices when you add the cooked meat to the rice, that will tend to make the finished product look oily. It’s not…but it’ll look that way. Try to only add the meat and sprouts, no juice.

Frying the rice in sesame oil gives a unique flavor that you won’t get from peanut or vegetable oil. That being said, you can use vegetable oil if you really have to and it’ll be pretty good. My own goal is to exactly replicate what I get from a take-out restaurant, and that involves using some sesame oil. 16-17oz of clear sesame oil is around $7, around here in the Chicago area.

Leftovers end up oily when heated up in the microwave oven: You’ve used too much oil to cook the rice in the first place. Use ONLY 2 tablespoons of sesame oil to fry the rice, and 1 tablespoon of sesame oil to sprinkle over the finished product.

Summary

Again: If you’re a restaurant chef, you can juggle everything and toss it around like a pro, all in the same wok. That’s because you’re…a pro! But for the rest of us, I believe it’s just as easy, just as much fun, and creates just as much of a mess, to cook it in different pans. One pan for the scrambled eggs, meat and sprouts, and the wok for the rice and final assembly.

If you use a can of La Choy bean sprouts, they’re already pretty soft. So you can just dump them into the rice, along with the meat. But fresh sprouts really have a better flavor. (Add some soy sauce if you’re using canned bean sprouts.)

• To store fresh bean sprouts a few days, cover them in cold water in a bowl. Cover the bowl and keep in the fridge. They’ll easily last 3-4 days, and even longer if necessary, without getting slimy.
• To store green onions, put them in a glass jar, root side to the bottom, in about 1 inch of water. Cover and keep in the fridge. They’ll last for months.

The finished product should be nicely brown, but not very dark brown. It also shouldn’t need any extra salt added at the table. You can play around with adding table salt while you’re cooking the dish. If you like pepper, you can add some black or white pepper to your taste. They’re pretty much the same thing, you just don’t see white pepper as easily.

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