Fried rice

• 4 cupscooked jasmine rice · cooked the day before, spread on a tray and refrigerated uncovered overnight
• 3 largeeggs · beaten with a pinch of salt, scrambled first and set aside
• 3 tbspneutral oil · peanut, avocado or rice bran, split across the egg and the two rice batches
• 4 wholescallions · whites sliced thin for the pan, greens sliced on a bias for the finish
• 3 clovesgarlic · minced, added late so it does not burn
• 1 tbspfresh ginger · minced or grated on a microplane
• 1 cupfrozen peas and diced carrots · used straight from frozen, no thawing, no blanching
• 8 ozcooked protein · diced Chinese sausage, leftover roast chicken, shrimp or pressed tofu, all optional
• 2 1/2 tbsplight soy sauce · or tamari for a gluten-free version, poured down the hot side of the pan
• 1 tspdark soy sauce · optional, for colour rather than salt, it is thicker and barely salty
• 1 tbspShaoxing wine · or dry sherry, splashed in just before the soy
• 1 1/2 tsptoasted sesame oil · off the heat at the very end, never in the pan while it is cooking
• 1/2 tspwhite pepper · ground, and it is not interchangeable with black here
• 1/2 tspkosher salt · adjusted at the end after the soy has gone in
• 1 tbspchili crisp · optional, at the table

Methode

1. 1

   The rice has to be cold, and here is the actual reason

   When rice cooks, starch granules absorb water and swell, and the surface is sticky and saturated. Chilled overnight, some of that starch retrogrades into a firmer crystalline structure and the surface loses water to the fridge air. A cold grain has somewhere to put the heat other than into evaporating its own moisture, so it fries. Warm rice in a hot pan releases steam, and steam plus starch is paste. This is the whole recipe in one paragraph.

2. 2

   Spread it on a tray, uncovered, and do not stack it in a tub

   Straight after cooking, tip the rice onto a rimmed sheet pan and rake it into a thin even layer with a fork. Cool it on the counter for twenty minutes, then refrigerate uncovered overnight. A sealed container traps the moisture you are trying to lose and the grains at the bottom stay wet and compacted. If the fridge smell worries you, a loose sheet of paper towel over the tray is fine. Four cups cooked is about a cup and a third raw.

3. 3

   The same-day version, if you did not plan ahead

   Cook the rice with about fifteen percent less water than usual, spread it on a tray, and put it in the freezer for forty-five minutes, raking it twice. It gets you most of the way there. Failing that, spread it out and point a fan at it for half an hour. What does not work is running cooked rice under cold water, which adds back exactly the surface moisture you need to remove. The overnight version is meaningfully better.

4. 4

   Long-grain, and why leftover takeout rice is the best of all

   Jasmine is the standard and has the right balance of fragrance and firmness. Any long-grain white rice works. Basmati is drier and gives a looser, more separate result that some people prefer. Short-grain and sushi rice are bred to be sticky and will clump no matter what you do. Brown rice works and needs a minute longer in the pan. A container of day-old takeout rice is genuinely ideal, and it is what most home cooks should be using.

5. 5

   Prep everything before the pan goes on, because you get eight minutes

   Once the heat is up, this cooks in under ten minutes and there is no point at which you can stop to chop garlic. Everything diced, the sauces measured into one small bowl, the eggs beaten, the rice broken up with your hands into individual grains and clumps crushed. Set it all beside the stove in the order it goes in. A stir-fry that stalls while you look for the sesame oil becomes a braise.

6. 6

   Break the cold rice up with wet hands before it goes near heat

   Cold rice comes out of the fridge in a slab. Wet your hands slightly, take handfuls, and crumble it until there are no lumps bigger than a pea. Doing this in the pan does not work, because you are pressing clumps against hot metal and the outside scorches while the inside stays compressed. Two minutes at the counter. A fork works but hands are faster and you can feel the lumps you would otherwise miss.

7. 7

   Cook the eggs first, separately, and take them out

   A tablespoon of oil, high heat, beaten eggs poured in and left for ten seconds before you push them around with a spatula. Twenty-five seconds total, pulled out while they are still glossy and slightly underdone, because they go back into a screaming hot pan later. Eggs scrambled into the rice at the end coat the grains in a film and make everything soft. Eggs cooked separately stay as distinct golden curds, which is what you want.

8. 8

   Two batches, and this is not negotiable on a home stove

   A restaurant wok burner puts out over 100,000 BTU. A good home range gives you maybe 18,000. Four cups of cold rice dropped into a home pan at once drops the surface temperature below the point where anything fries, and you get warm steamed rice with soy on it. Two batches of two cups each, two minutes apart, keeps the pan hot. It takes four extra minutes and it is the difference between fried rice and reheated rice.

9. 9

   Use the widest heavy pan you own, and preheat it dry

   A flat-bottomed carbon steel wok is best, a twelve-inch cast iron or carbon steel skillet is close behind, and a nonstick pan is the worst option because most cannot be safely taken to the temperature this needs. Heat the empty pan until a drop of water skitters and evaporates in about a second, then add the oil and swirl. Adding oil to a cold pan and heating them together gives you a lower final temperature and food that sticks.

10. 10

    Frozen vegetables straight from the bag, and nothing watery

    Frozen peas and carrots go in frozen. They are blanched before freezing, they thaw in thirty seconds in a hot pan, and they carry far less water than fresh vegetables cooked from raw. Thawing them first just gives you a wet handful. What to avoid entirely is anything with high water content and a long cook time: courgette, mushrooms, fresh tomato and bell pepper all flood the pan. Frozen corn and edamame are both excellent additions.

11. 11

    Soy sauce goes down the side of the pan, never into the middle

    Pour the soy in a thin stream around the hot rim of the pan so it hits bare metal and sizzles for a second before it reaches the rice. That brief contact with a very hot surface caramelises the sugars and amino acids in it, which is where the deep savoury note in restaurant fried rice comes from. Poured into the centre it simply pools, wets the rice underneath and steams. Same volume, entirely different result.

12. 12

    Restraint on liquid: two and a half tablespoons for four servings

    Fried rice should be seasoned, not brown. Every extra tablespoon of soy is a tablespoon of water going into grains you spent a night drying out. Two and a half tablespoons of light soy for four servings, a teaspoon of dark soy if you want the colour without more salt, and a splash of Shaoxing for aroma. Taste and add salt rather than more soy if it needs seasoning. White pepper does most of the remaining work.

13. 13

    Sesame oil and scallion greens off the heat, always

    Toasted sesame oil has a low smoke point and its aroma compounds are volatile, so anything more than residual pan heat drives them off and leaves a faintly bitter oiliness. Kill the heat, add a teaspoon and a half, toss twice, and add the sliced scallion greens so they wilt rather than cook. The same applies to chili crisp and to a squeeze of lime if you use one. Everything aromatic goes in after the flame is out.

14. 14

    Storage, reheating and the thing fried rice is genuinely for

    Cooked rice should not sit at room temperature for more than an hour, because Bacillus cereus spores survive cooking and multiply in the warm zone. Cool it fast on a tray and refrigerate within an hour, keep it four days, and reheat it hard in a pan rather than gently in a microwave. As meal prep it holds better than almost anything else on this site, and the point of the dish is that it turns Sunday rice and Wednesday leftovers into Thursday dinner.