When living in Japan throughout the entire late 80’s I travelled a lot to the Philippines and Thailand; and all I ever wanted for a breakfast was some sort of rice dish with egg. In the PI, that was sinangag, and in Thailand, plain white rice and a couple of fried eggs on top—with a side of a very hot watery green chili condiment to dribble on the thing. Don’t know what it’s called.
Coupla weeks ago in my Resistant Starch posts, a commenter originally from the PI found it difficult to contain his elation over being able to eat garlic fried rice, again. And that’s when I remembered having it many times. First time, I made it kinda classic, only with yellow and not green onion, and I like to do the egg Japanese fried rice-style.
So good. The garlic is to sinangag what fine ground black pepper is to many of the Japanese fried rice dishes I had.
So last night, this was my chicken fried rice, sinangag inspired. Sometimes, I like to stage everything before I start cooking. Here’s your list of ‘griedients, in a pic.
Ingredients
- Rice from the fridge. Uncle Ben’s Original, cooked in chicken stock.
It’s parboiled, which does two things. Since parboiled in the husk before drying and polishing, it takes on some of the nutrition and second, it has far more resistant starch as opposed to fast digesting starch. This gives it a glycemic index in the 30s instead of 100. Feed your gut bugs, get more nutrition (plus, cooking in chicken stock for even more), and no coma.
- Leftover chicken from a rotisserie (3rd part of a meal from that one bird, and now, the carcass goes into chicken stock to make soup).
- 1 slice of bacon, diced up.
- Kerrygold grassfed butter.
- Leftover lightly steamed carrots, diced.
- Diced yellow onion.
- Diced celery.
- Two eggs.
- Star of the show: 3 cloves of garlic hand chopped and diced. You want the bitty chunks. Do it by hand with patience and love.
- Sea salt, ground black pepper, and soy sauce for the final seasonings.
First, a couple nice pats of butter in the wok, then the garlic, just until they just begin to smoke from toasting. Take it off the heat, remove the toasties to a bowl. Then, introduce the bacon into the same oil, doing it the same way. You’ll get a bit more fat from the bacon.
Bacon to the left of me, garlic to the right. Here I am.
This goes back in…at the very end.
I added just a touch more butter (individual thing: eyeball it), then in went the onion. Normally, I’d put in the onion, celery and carrot at the same time…but the celery was already a bit soft from the fridge, and the carrot had been pre-steamed. Soon as the onion was translucent, in went the celery for a while, then the chicken.
Next was to dump in the rice and carrot. Plus, a decent dusting of pepper, pinch or two of salt. Mix it all up well, then spread it over the wok to heat, on high, getting a little crunch on some of the rice. Then, egg time.
Push the rice aside, make a wet scramble, then mix it all together until the egg is all cooked. At the very end, toss in your bacon and garlic bits, toss nicely, and then just “rain” some soy sauce on it lightly to finish.
Two complete meals
Another, artsy-fartsy, depth-of-fieldish?
Click for Bigger
Give it a shot. For breakfast, I want the classic: just garlic, onion and egg. But this makes a great dinner with a few more veggies and a bit more protein.
Hey Richard, doesn’t heating the rice so much kill the resistant starch? How do you avoid that?
Recipe looks great though, I’m gonna try it this weekend. Thanks!
@Dan,
I believe (correct me if I’m wrong Richard) that the Uncle Ben’s starts out with resistant starch due to being parboiled, you cook it and cool it = more resistant starch, and then stir frying it actually creates some more.
Yep, retrograde RS is resistant to becoming non-resistant.
Bam… just exactly how I would have made it. The 1st image was a sight to see. this is the way we are supposed to do it. NOT IN CARDBOARD BOXES OR ANY KIND OF PROCESSED FOODS THEN USING MICROWAVE.
You gotta cook your food with love so that every bite, every chewing moment feels so satisfying and enjoyable to eat. guaranteed. turn the TV off and focus solely on eating a good nutritious meal for you and your gut.
@Richard
Have you tried chopped Chinese sausage in your loaded garlic sinangag ?
May want to skip the chinese sausage cos they usually make them with loads of sugar
I used to make fried rice with luncheon meat (spam) but that’s a no-go as well these days
Nope no sausage, but I try to remember that next time I’m at the Asian market.
Only thing missing is the lumpia! Gawd I do love those!
@BigRob @Richard
Wow, awesome! I don’t know how I missed that… I’ve read through all the blog posts but missed it somehow. Mashed potatoes here I come.
And pancit, Rob. Gotta do that. I can taste the citrus lime goodness.
looks yummy, i love fried rice. there’re so many variations.
sometimes i just break a few (raw) eggs & sprinkle some cheese & bake few seconds to make a casserole. this may be a Hong Kongese (or Singaporian?) anyway, it’s a “fusion (comfort) food”
i usually use jasmine for fried rice. didn’t know Uncle Ben has a parboiled. have to try it.
cheers
yeah… thanks for exploiting the possibilities of resistant starch that I can literally bring back a lot of the Asian food that I grew up with. I guess a lot of cultures actually got it right from the start with its own traditional foods up until industrialization of the food supply started to become mainstream to the point of destroying our health.
@sootedninjas,
you make a point of RS in traditional cuisine.
fried rice is typically made from left over rice. (not freshly cooked, warm rice). cool rice is supposed to make a better tasting fried rice.
cheers,
true..true
never make fried rice from freshly cooked rice. it does not work. too mushy.
Wait a second…this is still confusing me: I thought RS molecules would burst at a high temp? So that’s the R1/R2 types and not the R3 then?
You can eat sources of R3 RS warm/hot as above?
Looks delicious! Quick question, what rice cooker do you use? Does it have a non-stick cooking surface? If it does, does that concern you?
Thanks!
I think it’s a Cuisinart and yes, it has a non-stick surface. Doesn’t concern me.
Hi Richard – A quick question about frying the rice. Does yours stick while you are re-frying it? I have replaced my teflon with ceramic, and no matter how much ghee or lard I use, that stuff sticks like crazy. Screaming hot pan, plenty of fat, and it still sticks. I’m thinking my old cast iron might even handle it better than this ceramic crap. What kind of a frying surface are you using? I don’t mind the brownness the sticking causes, in fact I kind of like it, but it’s difficult to cook it well when it doesn’t want to move in the pan. Just wondering if I’m being too fussy or if there’s some trick I’m missing. Thanks!
Ann
I use a classic steel wok, like used all over Asia. What you want is one of those sorta circular wok spatulas, this is key. What you need is to CONTINUOUSLY stir (get it, STIR fry?) until the food heats up sufficiently, then it won’t stick (just a little bit of sticking while stirring). Once you introduce the egg, it will stick but that you leave alone for a minute until it sets and then stir it all into the rice and keep siring.
There is kinda an art to it. Check some YouTube’s on wok cooking and see how various Asians do it.
Is there a brand of par-boiled rice without the enriched vitamins. Uncle Bens adds the folic acid which is not great for anyone with the MTHFR polymorphism. Anyone else concerned? I like the idea of the higher RS3 with the parboiled rice.
This is so simple, thanks for sharing this recipe with pictures which make it easy to know.