Easy Egg Fried Rice (Better Than Takeout)

This is my go-to fried rice recipe—simple, delicious, and even Uncle Roger–approved.

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The first step for a good fried rice,
and I mean really good fried rice, is to make your own chicken rice. We’ll start off by getting the skin on a bone
in chicken thigh as crispy as possible. We’re using this chicken to make something
called chicken rice. And what that is, is a more flavorful rice that we’ll use as the
base of our fried rice. If you prefer to use leftover rice that you
have at home, that’s totally fine. Just make sure it’s nice
and dry. But I’m making mine from scratch because it does make a more flavorful fried
rice. While that finishes crisping up,
I’ll move over to my cutting board and chop one green onion into three sections. I’ll add those to a separate pot along with
some ginger, some of my presoaked and pre rinsed rice,
some homemade chicken stock, and a generous pinch of salt. By now my chicken should look nice and
crispy, so I’ll transfer this to my pot of rice. Then toss on a lid and bring it to a boil. Once this comes to a boil,
turn it to a simmer and cover for ten minutes while our rice cooks,
let’s prep our ingredients for our fried rice. First, I’ll need to chop up a few
shallots, which have a nice, sweet but not overpowering
oniony flavor. The goal with chopping these is to chop them
to about the same size as a cooked grain of rice. Use a sharp knife for this part or you
are going to cry. I’m using a sharp knife and I’m crying
anyway. I’ll cry for a good fried rice any day
though. I love onions that look like this when they’re all super fine like that and
they sort of melt in the pan, I think it’s worth the cry. Now, same thing with your
garlic, but we’ll mince it just a touch finer than we
just did for those shallots. If you can get in a rhythm with your chef’s
knife like this, kind of rocking it back and forth, this process happens pretty quick. By
the time your garlic is chopped, your rice should be done. So turn it off and leave it
there with the lid on to steam for another ten minutes. The last things we need to prep
are these green onions, which I’m going to thinly slice. And for this we’ll use the whole green onion
from the top of the green all the way down to the bottom of the white parts. And finally,
of course, eggs. For the eggs. I’ll crack two whole eggs
into a bowl, then separate out one additional egg yolk. This just adds a bit of extra fat to your
fried rice. Whisk up your eggs until they’re fully
combined. There’s no need to overmix, but whisk them up until it feels right. And since
we made our own special rice, I’ll remove all of our aromatics and then,
just so we can dry it out a little bit and make it more similar to day old leftover
rice, I’ll add it all to a sheet tray,
then spread it out evenly and place this in the refrigerator, ideally overnight,
to dry out when making fried rice. If you have a wok, use a wok. The first step is to coat your entire wok or
pan with oil. We’re looking to heat this oil until the pan
starts to smoke, and if I need help getting it up on the edges, I’ll just dab a paper
towel and go all the way around the sides. Once that oil starts to smoke,
carefully pour it off into a heatproof bowl. We are done with that oil. Now turn your heat to about medium medium low
and get ready because this happens fast. Here we go. First up,
chicken fat. Because of how hot the pan is,
that’s gonna melt quickly and immediately. Garlic and shallots mix that up. You can turn the heat up just a tiny bit
here. But again you don’t want to burn anything.
These are only gonna cook right now for about 30 to 45 seconds. Always scrape down the
sides of the pan. Don’t let anything burn. Once the shallot and garlic is aromatic,
move it off to the side and pour in your eggs. The goal with the eggs is to get it
nice and fluffy, just like this. We’re only gonna cook the
eggs for about 30 to 45 seconds as well. We just want to fluff it up and that’s it. Now in goes our rice. You should immediately
hear that crackling and popping if your pans at the correct temperature. This is what we
want to hear. At this stage. We’ll want to cook our rice for about 2 to 3 minutes,
making sure every individual grain of rice is separate. Don’t let anything clump together. If you’re at this stage in the fried rice
making process and you’re sweating a little bit, you’re not alone. This is a quick and
high heat and hot recipe at this stage. Keep things moving. Do not let anything burn. The way I think about it is that you want
every grain of rice, every bit of egg, every bit of everything to be touching the
pan the same amount of time. And that means moving it all around all the
time. Now here’s a good trick Before adding my soy
sauce, I scrape all of my fried rice to the edge of
my wok and then tilt my pan so the flame is hitting mostly one edge of the pan. Then you want to pour soy sauce on the edge
of your pan so it bubbles up like this, and a little splash of sesame oil. And then mix that in,
trying to coat every grain of rice evenly as you mix. As a final step,
add in your green onions and optionally a green chili. Although I tend to leave the
green chili out of things, then just mix once more for 30s and your
fried rice is done! Have fun doing the wok flip,
but try not to lose too much fried rice on your stovetop. It’s fun to try to flip your
fried rice into your wok spoon and then spoon that onto your plate. It takes a lot of
hand-eye coordination, but it’s always my final little challenge to see if I can do it
without spilling. I like to finish off my fried rice with a
sunny side up egg, so in a pan I’ll melt some butter. And once
that butter is melted, crack in your egg. Immediately toss on your
lid and just let it cook and voila! A perfect sunny side up egg to place over the
top to plate my fried rice. I’m going to pack it tightly into this bowl,
flip my plate over the top of it, and then finish with a sprinkle of green
onions and a nice fried egg. I don’t even need to try it. I know it’s delicious. I am gonna try it.