Although egg fried rice is a really quick dish to make, it really is much better if you can find time to pre-cook the rice. Rice that has been cooled and 'dried' is much less likely to stick together and give you that clumpy effect.
Ideally, I'd recommend using jasmine rice - although other types of rice will work, jasmine seems to give a more authentic finish.
I've included spring onion, pepper, pak choi and beansprouts in this dish, but a number of other vegetables would work equally well with the prawns.
The eggs can be added either as per the recipe below, (when the rice is pushed to one side and the egg cooked separately and then mixed in), or you can simply pour the egg over the rice and mix it through.
Serves 3-4
2-3 tablespoons of vegetable oil
225g jasmine rice
Bunch of spring onions (or white onion)
1 red or yellow pepper
1 pak choi
220g king prawns
Beansprouts
2 eggs
1 tablespoon of light soy sauce
1 tablespoon of sesame oil
1 tablespoon of oyster sauce
Garnish
Spring onions
Toasted sesame seeds
- Place the rice in a bowl and cover with cold water. Stir the rice in the bowl and then drain. Repeat until the water runs clear.
- Add the rice to a pan of boiling water, cover and cook on a fast simmer for 10 minutes.
- Drain the rice and cover for 3 minutes, then place in a wide shallow dish to cool. Once the rice has reached room temperature, cover and place in the fridge.
- Cut the top off the spring onions, at the point the green stalk splits into a number of pieces.
- Thinly slice the spring onion tops into rings and set aside to use as a garnish.
- If the pak choi is relatively small, then simply remove the leaves from the stalk and use whole. If the pak choi are larger, then slice the green tops of the pak choi leaves into 1cm strips and cut the white pak choi leaves in half or thirds.
- De-seed the pepper and cut it into thin strips.
- Whisk the eggs.
- Heat two tablespoons of oil in a wide frying pan over a medium heat. Once the oil is hot, add the red pepper, whole pak choi or pak choi chunks and the spring onion chunks.
- Stir fry, constantly keeping the pieces moving, until the pepper starts to soften.
- Now add the king prawns and beansprouts, and stir fry for a couple more minutes until the prawns start to change colour.
- Throw in the green pieces of pak choi and mix with the other ingredients.
- Add the rice to the pan, mix well with the vegetables and then press down into the bottom of the pan. After a couple more minutes, stir fry until the rice is heated all the way through.
- Push the rice to one side of the pan and pour in the eggs. Use a wooden spatula to move the eggs around until they are cooked through.
- Mix the rice and eggs together.
- Add 1 tablespoon of light soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of sesame oil and 1 tablespoon of oyster sauce. Mix well.
- Serve and garnish with the spring onion rings and toasted sesame seeds.
