Day 1: Fried Rice

My favorite go-to meal is fried rice. Simple, yet effective. I love making this for lunch because it’s quick to cook and a good excuse to use some leftover rice and a random assortment of veggies. My recipe changes constantly with the more I cook it and the more videos I watch that feature fried rice, but typically, the ingredients list includes:

• rice, duh (preferably a couple days old)
• onion
• carrot
• garlic
• scallion
• other frozen veggies (e.g., peas, corn)
• soy sauce
• sesame oil
• some sort of protein (e.g., chicken, bacon, pork,

The general steps for cooking look something like this (by no means is this a recipe):

1. Prep your veggies. Chop your onion, carrot, and scallion. Separate scallions into whites and greens. Grate or mince garlic.
2. Cook aromatics. Cook onion, garlic, and scallion whites together in some oil.
3. Cook remaining veggies. Add carrots and other veggies.
4. Add in the rice. Pro-tip: separate the rice grains before adding it to the pan. Stir together all the veggie goodness with the rice.
5. Season the rice. Add soy sauce, sesame oil, and any other seasonings (sometimes I use ground white pepper). Mix into the pan so it coats every rice grain.
6. Add eggs. Push the rice to one side (preferably the side where the oil tends to pool because your stove top is not perfectly straight…) and crack in however many eggs you want. Scramble the eggs and mix into the rice.
7. Put finishing touches. Add the scallion greens, sesame seeds, and any other embellishments. I love to add chili oil, and have also used furikake in the past.

Photographic Evidence