Chicken Fried Rice is the most convenient one-pot dinner that gets ready in under 30 minutes. Be sure to watch the video!
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Fried Rice is the ultimate definition of comfort food. I love fried rice because it best uses leftover rice, chicken, and vegetables.
It has – rice, protein, vegetables, and eggs – one of the best meal-prep recipes, so easy to cook, and a perfect comfort meal in a bowl.
Whether you are a novice cook with limited resources or a busy homemaker with hungry goblins, you need a stir-fry pan (wok), leftover cooked rice, and chicken.
Reasons To LOVE Fried Rice
- easy to customize
- family-friendly dish
- one-pot, fulfilling meal
- the best use of leftovers
- requires less than 30 minutes
Ingredients Required
- Boiled/Cooked Rice: Use the long to medium rice for stir-frying. The leftover cold white rice straight out of the fridge is best.
- Vegetables: From fresh peas, bell peppers, cabbage, green beans, carrot, and snow peas to any other vegetables with a crunch is perfect for stir-frying with rice. Make sure to chop all the vegetables finely.
- Chicken: The tender, boneless chicken breast or thigh is best for stir-frying. Cut all the chicken pieces into small bite sizes to cook quickly.
- Eggs: There are two methods to add eggs to fried rice – either you can add whisked eggs to get spongy clouds of scrambled eggs in your rice. Or you can top it with a half-fried egg before serving.
- Cooking Oil: I use only sesame oil for Asian-style cooking. The nutty taste and aroma give the chicken fried rice an extra kick. Instead of sesame oil, you can use peanut, groundnut, or other vegetable oil.
- Herbs & Seasoning: Ginger, Garlic, Celery, and Spring Onion are the souls of delicious fried rice. It would be best to have a good quality soy sauce, white vinegar, salt, chilli flakes, and black pepper.
Stir-Fry Pan/Wok: A Chinese wok or stir-fry pan is essential for making fried rice. You cannot get those crispy bits of rice in any other cooking utensil.
High Heat: Stir-Fry Cooking is all about high heat and fast cooking. You cannot make takeaway-style fried rice on low heat. Hence, keep the stovetop heat high while stir-frying the chicken, vegetables, and rice.
Recipe Variation
Fried Rice is a highly customizable dish. Here are a few of my favourite recipe variations of chicken fried rice.
- substitute chicken with shrimp, prawns, bacon, or pork
- for a healthy version, replace rice with quinoa, cauliflower rice, bulgar wheat, or brown rice
- for add-on toppings, you can use mung bean sprouts, roasted peanuts, chopped kimchi, or canned bamboo shoots
- for a fruity twist, you can try my Thai-style pineapple fried rice
- or if you want vegan, Indian-style coconut cashew fried rice or mushroom fried rice.
My Tried & True Tips
Tip 1: Stay away from overcooked rice
If you are thinking of stir-frying, avoid using hot and mushy rice. The ideal choice is al dente, cold, or slightly undercooked rice.
Tip 2: Marinated chicken adds a lot of flavours
A quick marinade of soy sauce and vinegar gives the chicken an excellent depth of flavour and saltiness. However, it is an optional step.
Tip 3: Meal Prep
The fried rice is a quick and fast meal. So prep beforehand all the vegetables, herbs, sauce, and seasoning, and place them next to your cooking stove within reach of your hands. This step ensures that you don’t stop while stir-frying over high heat.
Tip 4: Use Wok
Use a wide wok or stir-fry pan to stir and mix the rice, vegetables, and chicken while frying.
Chicken Fried Rice FAQs
Tender boneless chicken breast or lean chicken thigh are the best for making fried rice. They are easy to cook and eat with the rice when shredded into small pieces.
Long-grain white rice is perfect for making fried rice. Long-grain rice has less starch. Hence, it does not stick, and each grain is fluffy. I prefer using Indian basmati rice for stir-frying. Many prefer Thai Jasmine Rice for stir-frying because of its aroma and sweet flavour.
Fried Rice is a perfect meal-prep and microwave-friendly meal. You can make a large batch in advance and store it in the refrigerator for 1 week. Do not leave cooked rice at room temperature for more than an hour. Bacteria develop very fast in cooked rice.
Watch Chicken Fried Rice Video
Serving Suggestion
If you are in the mood to make an elaborate takeaway-style meal at home, here are a few of my family’s favourite main-course dish suggestions to accompany fried rice:
Vegetable in Hot Garlic Sauce – one-pot vegetable gravy
Chilli Mushroom Sauce – vegan, spicy, one-pot gravy
Veg Manchurian Gravy – Indian-Chinese takeaway-style vegan meatballs
Dry Chilli Chicken – takeaway style saucy fried chicken
More Chinese Style Recipes
- Smashed Cucumber Salad
- Chinese Chicken Salad
- Chicken Noodles Soup
- Asian Chicken Meatballs
- Tofu Vegetable Stir Fry
- Homemade Chilli Oil
- Stir-Fried Broccoli
- Kung Pao Chicken
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Chicken Fried Rice Recipe
Ingredients
- ¼ Cup light soy sauce
- 2 tablespoon white vinegar
- 200 gram boneless, skinless chicken pieces (breast or thigh)
- 2 tablespoon refined oil
- 2 eggs
- 4 tablespoon sesame oil or vegetable oil
- 2 tablespoon garlic, finely chopped
- 2 tablespoon ginger, finely chopped
- 1 tablespoon celery stalk, finely chopped
- ½ Cup onion, finely chopped (spring onion or white onion)
- 1 teaspoon red chilli flakes
- 1 Cup mix vegetable (bell pepper, beans, carrot)
- 1 tablespoon red chilli paste
- 1 ½ teaspoon salt or to taste
- 1 ½ teaspoon black pepper powder
- 2 ½ Cup rice, cooked
- ¼ Cup spring onion, finely chopped
Instructions
Prep Work For Fried Rice:
- Chop all the vegetables. Combine soy sauce and vinegar. Cut the chicken into bite-size pieces. Marinate chicken pieces with half of the sauce mix, salt, and black pepper for 15 minutes. Whisk eggs in a bowl with a pinch of salt and pepper. Place all these ingredients next to the cooking stovetop.
Cook Fried Rice:
- Heat wok over high heat. Add refined oil. Add whisked egg. Scramble the eggs till cooked. Transfer to a plate.
- Add sesame oil to the same wok. Once the oil is hot, add ginger, garlic, and celery. Stir fry over high heat for 1 minute. The aroma of the garlic and ginger will start releasing. No need to brown the garlic.
- Add onion and chilli flakes. Stir fry till the onion become slightly translucent.
- Add marinated chicken pieces. Stir fry till chicken turns pale white in color and fully cooked.
- Add chopped vegetables, remaining sauce, chilli paste, salt, and pepper. Stir fry for 1 minute. Do not cook for too long.
- Add cooked rice and mix. Make sure rice, vegetables, and chicken are combined nicely without any lumps. Let the rice sizzle on the hot wok for a minute to get fried. Do not mash the rice while stir-frying.
- Add scrambled eggs and spring onion. Mix nicely. If you like the crispy bits of fried rice, let the rice sizzle on the hot wok for 1 – 2 minutes.
- Serve chicken fried rice warm.
Recipe Notes:
- The leftover chilled white rice straight out of the fridge is best for making fried rice. Use the best available long to medium-grain rice for stir-frying.
- The tender, boneless chicken breast or thigh is best for any kind of stir-frying. Cut all the chicken pieces into small bite sizes so that they cook easily in no time.
- You can keep the marinated chicken in the refrigerator until required to make fried rice.
- A Chinese wok or the stir-fry pan is the most important accessory for stir-fry cooking.
- Keep the stovetop heat at HIGH while stir-frying the chicken, vegetables, and rice.
- Prep beforehand all the vegetables, herbs, sauce, seasoning, and place them next to your cooking stove while making fried rice.
- Fried Rice is a perfect meal-prep and microwave-friendly meal. You can make a large batch in advance and store it in the fridge for a week
Nutrition
Aditi Goel says
Going to try it soon!
Hina Gujral says
Great!
shankar das says
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Hina Gujral says
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Kirtika saha says
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