If you’ve gotten out of the habit of meal prep, here’s a handy dish to add to the Monday-through-Friday rotation to keep dinner from going off the rails. Chef Tracy Chang of Pagu in Cambridge offers up a recipe from her youth that, with a teeny tiny bit of advance prep, is easy to throw together for a fabulously tasty weeknight dinner. Cook the rice the night before and keep it chilled (or even frozen) until you’re ready to use it (to get a better texture), then you can fry up a meal for the whole family in no time.
Tracy Chang’s Childhood Fried Rice Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups Tamaki Gold Haiga rice
- 1 1/2 cups water
- 1/4 cup shallots
- 1/4 cup canola oil
- 2 teaspoons canola oil
- 8 1/2 ounces of of Taiwanese duck and pork sausage; sliced thin into half moon shapes
- 2 cups egg
- 4 teaspoons garlic
- 1 1/2 tablespoons scallion
- 1/2 cup peas
- 1/2 cup carrots
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper, coarse cracked
Directions
- Cook rice and water the day before. Cover and set aside to dry in refrigerator.
- On medium heat, caramelize shallots until golden. Strain and reserve shallots and oil.
- On medium heat, toast oil and sausage. Strain and reserve both.
- Add shallot oil back on medium heat. Cook eggs, mixing continuously with chopsticks to fluff eggs.
- Add 1/4 teaspoon of salt to eggs.
- Maintain wet eggs and do not color. Remove when eggs are still a bit runny and reserve.
- Add back sausage oil on medium heat. Add garlic and half of scallions.
- Cook until garlic is golden. Add rice back in and break up so rice grains are individual are not in chunks.
- Add 1/4 teaspoon of salt to rice.
- Add sausage back in and incorporate well. No chunks!
- Sautee well until ingredients are well incorporated. Add ½ teaspoon of salt.
- Change to high heat. Let rice sit so the bottom develops a golden crust.
- Kill heat. Add black pepper, peas and carrots, and mix well. Season to taste if more salt and pepper are necessary.
