How to Make Fried Rice at Home

Fried Rice
Prep: 10 Mins | Total: 30 Mins
Serves: 4
Difficulty: Easy
Ingredients
2 Tablespoons Oil, divided
1 Cup Onion, chopped
½ Pound Boneless skinless chicken (Optional), cut into bite sized pieces (or boneless pork chop)
½ Tablespoon Butter
Kosher Salt, to taste
Ground Black Pepper, to taste
½ teaspoon Sesame oil
2 beaten Eggs
2 Cups Cold, cooked rice, grains separated/fluffed with a fork (day-old rice is great)
2 cloves Garlic, minced
1 Cup Frozen peas and carrots (thawed)
2 Tablespoons Soy Sauce, or to taste (reduced sodium is OK)
4 Green Onions (Optional), chopped
Directions
In a large non-stick pan, heat 1 tablespoon of oil over medium heat. Add the chopped onions and sauté them until they turn a nice brown color, about 8 - 10 minutes. Add the chicken (or pork) and season with salt and pepper to taste. Cook for 3 - 5 minutes until the meat is mostly cooked through. Remove the onions and meat from the pan and set them aside.
Season the beaten eggs with salt. Add ½ tablespoon of butter and oil to the pan and pour in beaten eggs. Cook the eggs, stirring occasionally, until they're just cooked. If needed, break the eggs up into smaller pieces with a spatula. Remove the cooked eggs from the pan and set them aside.
Increase the heat to medium high and add the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil to the pan. Once the pan is hot, add the cooked rice, cooked onions and meat, and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until everything is heated through, about 5 minutes.
Add the thawed peas and carrots and the soy sauce to rice mixture and sauté for 1 minute, mixing to combine.
Garnish with chopped green onions, if desired. Serve warm.

This spectacular restaurant-style chicken fried rice tastes just like takeout, but it’s so easy to cook at home, you’ll make it again and again. The next time you bring home a carton of leftover white rice from the Chinese restaurant, transform it into dinner in a flash. You don’t need a wok (or any ingredients that you don’t already have in your pantry) for authentic flavor that will get rave reviews from your whole family.

Cold, cooked rice is essential for this fried rice recipe — if you use hot rice, you’ll just end up with a gummy mess. And it’s not fried rice without the egg. We’ll show you how to scramble it in a little sesame oil so that your homemade fried rice tastes just like the one that you always get delivered.

We made our fried rice with tender bites of chicken breast, but the fun thing about making your own fried rice is that you can basically throw in whatever you want: pork, shrimp, tofu, or more veggies–bean sprouts, shredded cabbage, or water chestnuts give the dish lots of crunch. We hope you’re skilled with chopsticks, because this fried rice is so good you’ll want to eat up every last grain. (OK, you can use a fork.)

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