Seems I can make Egg Fried Rice 🍳🍚
One late afternoon, in the middle of a work week, I found myself scratching my head: “What can i quickly whip up for lunch?”
The biggest downside of working from home is that you have to make your own lunch. The chore of just thinking about the lunch menu can stump my wife and I — the actual cooking is fun(!), but just figuring out the menu is taxing.
So, on this particular weekday afternoon, with the clock steadily ticking, and the next meeting looming large, I made a snap decision: I will make Egg Fried Rice.
Did I ever make egg fired rice before? Nope.
Did I ever make fried rice before? Nope.
Have I had egg fried rice before? Yes, plenty of times. And from my recollection, any version of egg fired rice has 4 basic ingredients:
- 🍳 scrambled egg;
- 🍚 rice that is partly fired;
- 🧂 salt; and
- 🌶 red chillies for heat.
So, I went, “how hard can it be?” … and dove right in. I announced to my wife that this was something I will be attempting. She gave me her skeptical look — the same look that I get from her every time i try to get her to eat some greens. In her head, she was already thinking of the bread and fruit in the fridge that she could gorge on once my experiment failed. I paid little attention to all that.
Here is what I did next. (And to kill the suspense, it turned out to be a filling lunch and my wife was pleasantly surprised.)
- Step 1. Fetch a clean pan, a dash of E.V. olive oil and heat the pan. I decided that i did not want to heat the pan too much as I wanted the egg to retain some of its sauciness to mix properly with the rice. 🥚
- Step 2. As quickly as I could, I cracked three eggs into the pan and started scrambling them … vigorously. The idea was simple: cook the egg enough to avoid tummy aches, but leave it just runny-enough to mix with the rice. 🍳
- Step 3. Once the egg was cooked to my liking, I turned down the heat to low, and fished out some rice from the fridge. This rice was left over from the night before. It was enough to feed two people (i cook larger portions for dinner by design). 🔥📉
- Step 4. I microwaved the rice for about 15 seconds. Thereafter, I started throwing in chunks of rice into the pan and mixing them with the scrambled eggs. As the rice was heating up in the pan, I threw in some olive oil on top of it — just a dash. This allowed the rice to go crispy a bit faster. 🍚
- Step 5. The rice and eggs are mixing well, and the white rice it slowly turning golden brown with the heat. At this point, i added salt and red chili powder to the egg-rice mix and stir the pan. 🌶
- Step 6. I also followed this with a quick chop of a red bell-pepper and threw it into the pan — this was intended to be more cosmetic in effect. I did not think that the bell pepper would contribute to the taste or flavor of the dish — just something to the texture as we would munch through the rice and egg. 🫑
- Step 7. I finally turned up the heat to high, and let it cook for 5 solid minutes — all ingredient together — while practicing my pan flips (they are still a work in progress). 🔥📈
- Step 8. Once the rice turned golden brown all over, and the egg seemed well-cooked, I turned off the stove entirely and covered the pan to retain some of that evaporating water. I find that if I can get some of that steam to hold back to the dish, it softens the fry and makes it easier to chew. 🍲
And then I make the announcement: “Food.” 📢
Like I said, my wife was surprised at both the look and the taste. To be honest, so was I — surprised i mean. Lunch was done! 🎯
It is rare for me when a question that starts out as “how hard can it be?” ends with an answer that goes something like, “not all that hard.” 👍
The whole experiment took me about 10–15 mins. And like I mentioned before: the actual cooking was fun. This lunch crunch got me a new dish under my gastronomic belt: “Slap-dash Egg Fried Rice”.
More importantly, we were well fed, and raced away to our next meetings.
👩💻👨💻
