In the long history of Chinese cuisine, fried rice as a simple and delicious way to cook can be traced back to the Eastern Han Dynasty. There is a record of rice stir-frying in "Qi Min Yaoshu", which marks the prototype of fried rice as a cooking technique. In the Tang and Song dynasties, with the exchange of the Silk Road, all kinds of vegetables and spices began to enrich the table of Chinese, and vegetable egg fried rice was also born, becoming a family dish that combines nutrition and deliciousness.
Legend has it that during the Ming Dynasty, there was a traveler named Xu Xiake, who tasted the special delicacies of various places when he traveled around the world. Once, when he came to a small town in the south of the Yangtze River, when he was hungry, an old woman brought a bowl of golden fried rice with vegetables and eggs. Xu Xiake praised it after tasting it, thinking that it was the best comfort during the trip. Since then, the fame of fried rice with vegetables and eggs has spread far and wide.
Cooking steps:
**Required Materials**:
- 300 grams of cold rice
- 2 eggs
- Carrots 50g (diced)
- Green beans 30 grams
- 30 grams of corn kernels
- 50g green pepper (diced)
- 2 garlic cloves (minced)
- Light soy sauce 15ml
- Salt 3 grams
- Pepper 2 grams
- 10g chopped green onion
**Steps**:
1. **Beating**: Crack the eggs into a bowl, add a pinch of salt and pepper, stir well and set aside.
2. **Scrambled eggs**: Put a small amount of oil in the pot, pour in the egg mixture, wait for the egg liquid to solidify, quickly stir-fry it into pieces with a spatula, and set aside.
3. **Stir-fry vegetables**: Add oil to the pot, add minced garlic and stir-fry until fragrant, then add diced carrots, green beans, corn kernels and diced green peppers, and stir-fry until the vegetables are broken.
4. **Fried Rice**: Add the cold rice to the pot, press it with a spatula and mix well with the vegetables.
5. **Seasoning**: Add light soy sauce, salt and pepper and continue to stir-fry so that the rice grains fully absorb the seasoning.
6. **Stir-fry**: Add the previously scrambled egg pieces back to the pot, stir-fry a few times, sprinkle with chopped green onions, and then get out of the pot.
Explain the principle
Using overnight cold rice can make the fried rice clearly grained and not easy to stick. Because the moisture in the cold rice is reduced, the starch ages, and it is easier to form a "grainy feeling". Flip quickly when scrambling eggs to keep the pieces tender. The addition of vegetables not only provides rich dietary fiber, but also makes the fried rice more attractive in color and increases appetite.
Precautions
- Do not heat too much when frying rice to avoid sticking to the bottom.
- Before adding the vegetables, make sure that the temperature inside the pan is high enough to quickly seal in the moisture of the vegetables, maintaining their bright color and crisp texture.
North-South differences
In the north, due to the heavy taste, more soy sauce may be added to the fried rice with vegetables to enhance the color; In the south, it is more likely to preserve the original flavor of the ingredients, and may use light soy sauce and a small amount of oyster sauce for seasoning.
Three dishes recommended
1. Vegetable fried noodles**: Use noodles instead of rice, add the same vegetables and eggs, and the condiment can be replaced with bean paste or sweet noodle sauce to make a rich texture of fried noodles.
2. **Vegetable pancakes**: Chop the vegetables, mix them with flour and eggs, mix them into a batter, spread them into thin cakes, fry them until golden brown on both sides, and serve them with garlic sauce.
3. **Vegetable minced meat pot**: Stir-fry vegetables and minced pork, add an appropriate amount of water, and simmer until the soup is thick, suitable for warming up in winter.
Practical cooking tips
- Before frying rice, you can put the cold rice in the freezer layer of the refrigerator overnight, so that it is easier to fry the grains clearly.
- When stir-frying vegetables, add them in batches according to their firmness and ripening speed to ensure that each vegetable achieves the best taste.
- When frying rice, try pressing the rice balls with the back of a spoon to help the rice grains spread out and avoid lumps.
- To increase the aroma of fried rice, add a pinch of peppercorn or five-spice powder at the end to enhance the flavor level.