Rice Plus Rummage Equals Dinner

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

We’ve all been here. It is the end of a long day at work. You’ve shuttled the kids to their after school activities and maybe you even fit in the gym. You know the refrigerator has leftovers, odds and ends from several nights where you actually had the time to cook. Tonight will have to be a night where the microwave gets put to its only use, reheating dinner.

But you open the refrigerator and nothing looks good. You’ve been eating from Tupperware all week. You might not have the energy to muster a dish completely from scratch but it would be really nice if somehow the food that is already there could transform into something, well, different.

The Chinese were on to this problem a long time ago. Two words: fried rice. Sure, fried rice can be a side you order from take out, but it is pretty easy and satisfying to make yourself. What’s more, making it yourself opens up a world of variations beyond the frozen peas and carrots of your typical take-out box.

The main thing you need is the rice. This is a rare time where leftover rice is actually preferable to fresh cooked. Letting the rice sit in the refrigerator overnight dries it out slightly, all the better for toasting in a hot skillet with a bit of oil. Here it is best to use long grain rice that is not sticky, like jasmine or basmati.

How you bulk up the rice is up to you and the depths of your refrigerator. On a given night I might have red chard sautéed with shallots and wine leftover and add some chopped chorizo that’s been lying around. On another night, I might dice leftover pork curry, add chopped button mushrooms and thinly sliced celery. If you do happen to have shrimp lying around, that is always a good addition in combination with crumbled sausage, diced pork, or all by itself.

Aside from the rice, I would say two other items are essential. One: sliced green onions. Everything else that goes into your rice can be already cooked, but having that little bite and crunch from the green onions is just what the dish needs to give it that freshly made taste.

The second essential is egg. I would allow one egg per two cups of leftover rice. Having tried for years to find the proper technique to get the egg in that badly scrambled way that all fried rice seems to be, I finally have the method down. In Vietnamese Homecooking, Chef Charles Phan makes his fried rice by first cooking the egg, breaking it directly into the hot oiled pan. He uses his spatula to scramble the egg while it is cooking in the wok. Only after the egg is cooked and lightly broken up does he add the rice and other ingredients. I have done this now many times and it works without fail.

How you season the rice is going to be highly dependent on whether the leftovers you are using already come in a sauce or heavy seasoning. I would recommend getting everything in the pan then tasting. From there use salt and pepper along with a pinch of sugar and splash of rice vinegar. You might want to add bit of soy sauce, fish sauce, Sriracha, or hoisin to get the flavor to your liking.

I’ve become so used to finding myself in the situation of wanting a new meal made from rice and leftovers, I am always sure to make a little too much rice to go with my curry or stir fry. With the rice, and egg, and some green onion, even on my most harried nights a fried rice dinner is only a rummage through the refrigerator away.

Serves/Makes: 2

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 cups cooked rice
• 1 ounce spicy Spanish chorizo or chinese sausage, diced
• 2 ounces button mushrooms, sliced
• 1 cup cooked greens like kale or swiss chard, chopped
• 1 pinch sugar
• salt and black pepper, to taste
• 2 teaspoons rice wine vinegar
• 1 green onion
• 1 teaspoon fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1/2 tablespoon hoisin sauce
• 2 teaspoons Sriracha hot sauce