recipe: fried rice

we had a hunk of leftover roasted pork shoulder and a few green onions in the freeze, so i decided to throw together some pork fried rice for dinner. i've cooked a lot of Asian food before, but somehow never ever made fried rice. i skipped using a recipe, relying on my hibachi-watching experience as the inspiration. while i'm sure it's not technically correct (and no, yuck it does not have peas), it still turned out pretty damn good, so i'm perfectly fine with that. i served it with Trader Joe's chicken and cilantro wontons... for a Monday night i was not quite ambitious enough to scratch-make wontons :)

ingredients list:

- 1 cup uncooked jasmin rice (or whatever kind of rice you prefer)

- 1 cup cooked pork, diced into small pieces (about 1/4 inch cubes. i used leftover shoulder, a pork roast would also work well. or chicken, or shrimp, or all of that)

- 1/2 cup onion, finely diced

- 1/2 cup carrots, finely diced

- 1 egg

- 1/4 cup green onions, diced

- 3 tbps (roughly) chives, diced

- 2 tbsp sesame oil

- 1/2 tsp ground ginger

- 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper

- 1 tsp garlic powder

- 4-6 tbsp low sodium soy sauce

to make: cook rice according to package directions.

while rice is cooking, heat sesame oil over medium heat in a large non-stick pan. add cooked pork, onion, crushed red pepper, and carrots, and cook until the veggies begin to soften and the onion starts to turn brown, about 10 minutes. push the pork/veggie mixture to the side of the pan, and add the egg to the pan and heat it until it is fried through, flipping once. mix egg into the pork/veggie mixture. 

the rice should be cooked at this point (my jasmine rice always cooks a lot quicker than it should - 13-15 minutes instead of 20-25). add the cooked rice into the pan with the pork/veggie/egg mix, then season with the ground ginger and garlic powder. pour in the soy sauce little by little, stirring well until the rice is fully covered with brown soy sauce and no more white spots remain.(i stopped adding the soy sauce when the rice was consistently brown, but you may opt to add more based on personal preference/taste)

mix in the chives and green onion, allow to cook 2-3 minutes more (stirring constantly), then serve!