Dinner Tonight: Shrimp Fried Rice
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Sometimes a classic is all you want to eat, and this fried rice recipe, amalgamated from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything and an old copy of Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine, is pretty much your straight-up classic fried rice. It hits all the right notes: ginger, carrot, garlic, and scallions. Jean George may have a deconstructed version, but this one does just fine.
The few secrets for good fried rice are to use high heat, minimal oil, and add the rice little by little so that the pan's temperature stays hot. Using leftover rice is best—the dryness facilitates frying—but if you need to cook the rice first, dinner can still be on the table in minutes. Feel free to swap the shrimp with other proteins such as chicken or tofu.
About the author: Blake Royer lives in Brooklyn and spends most of his free time cooking and writing about it here at Serious Eats and on The Paupered Chef. From 9 to 5 weekdays, he works as an assistant book editor in Manhattan.
Ingredients
- 1 egg
- 2 cups cooked rice
- 4 scallions, sliced
- 1 carrot, grated
- 1 clove garlic, peeled and chopped
- 1 thumb-sized piece ginger, peeled and grated
- 10-12 cooked (or uncooked) shrimp, deveined and chopped
- 2-3 tablespoons soy sauce
- Juice from half a lime
Procedures
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1
If cooking rice, do so first, then rinse well to cool.
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2
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3
Add the shrimp. If raw, stir until cooked through; if pre-cooked, move on to the next step immediately.
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4
Add the rice, handful by handful, stirring constantly to fry.
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5
Make a hole in the middle of the rice and crack the egg into it. Stir quickly but gently, incorporating more and more rice until the egg is well-distributed.
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6
Add the soy sauce and lime juice, then season with salt and pepper (or more soy sauce). Top with the last scallion.
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