Basic Egg Fried Rice Recipe with Additional Ideas

Egg fried rice is one of the easiest meal to make. Not to mention, it's flexible because you can add almost anything leftover in your refrigerator. From past experience, fried rice comes out kinda gooey and sticky if you don't use cold rice. And that's the secret to cooking fried rice -- use cooked cold white rice.

The easiest way to make Egg Fried Rice

Here, we typically use leftover rice from the night before. And many times, I cook more white rice than needed so that I may have extras for the next day to fry.

Basic Ingredients for Egg Fried Rice

Ingredients for 1 serving):
  • 1 cup Cold Rice
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 clove of Garlic (chopped)
  • 1/2 teaspoon Soy Sauce

Direction:

In a frying pan (e.g. Cuisinart Classic Stainless Steel Stir-Fry Pan) over medium to high heat, pour two tablespoons of olive oil. Now, there are two basic ways to cook. If you want eggs in clumps, cook them first until they solidify like scramble eggs, then pour the rice. Stir and break rice clumps. Eggs should be easy to chop up as well as you stir. Pour soy sauce and continue to stir and cook for 1-2 minutes. Serve.

If you want to the eggs to be less clumpy and in tinier pieces, cook rice first and break up the clumps. Pour eggs after 2 minutes and continue to stir. Pour soy sauce and finish cooking. Serve.

What else can you add to egg fried rice? Well, this is probably where going to cooking school helps, but I tend to just use whatever I can find in the kitchen. Meaning that chopped onions, garlic, cooked bacon, mushroom, scallions, cilantro, cooked pork, cooked chicken, tofu, carrots, peas, corn, and a bunch more are candidates. Of course, not all at once. Here are some examples:

Bacon Egg Fried Rice

Adding Bacon to basic Egg Fried Rice

Onion, Garlic and Cilantro Egg Fried Rice

Adding Chopped Onions, Cilantro and Siracha Sauce to basic Egg Fried Rice

Pork, Bacon, and Broccoli Fried Rice

Adding Cubed Pork, Bacon, and Broccoli to basic Egg Fried Rice

Tofu Egg Fried Rice

Adding Tofu and Broccoli to basic Egg Fried Rice