Restaurant-Style Chicken Fried Rice (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret ingredient to restaurant fried rice? ›

Cooking bits of chopped vegetables, seasoning, soy sauce, and oil, seems easy enough. However, when making fried rice at home, there's one ingredient you may be overlooking: Sugar.

On average, a typical serving of chicken fried rice (about 1 cup or 240 grams) may contain approximately 300 to 400 calories.

The answer: high heat, expert tosses, and something known as 'wok hei. ' As J. Kenji López-Alt writes for Serious Eats, expert cooking with a wok (and the gas range it requires) is one of the main reasons that fried rice from a Chinese restaurant tastes so much better than what you can make at home.

That's one of the major differences between how Chinese and Japanese restaurants prepare fried rice. Whereas the former only uses oil, the latter cooks leftover grains with butter (plus soy sauce).

Onion, Garlic, Scallions – These are your aromatics AKA your best friend in building flavor. Carrots, Peas – Most takeout restaurants use carrots and peas; this is what I like to use, too! However, you can always customize this to your liking! MSG – I like to use MSG in my cooking but this is always optional.

Traditional restaurant fried rice with chicken isn't usually a very healthy option. It's made with white rice, which is less nutrient dense than brown rice, and is usually laden with lots of oil. It also is normally really high in sodium and can contain lots of unwanted additives like MSG and other preservatives.

Typical side dishes like fried rice, lo mein noodles, crab rangoon, and egg rolls are high in calories — and fat. Healthier choices include steamed brown rice, sautéed or steamed vegetables, spring rolls, or soups like egg drop soup or hot and sour soup.

The problems with fried rice

It's also typically filled with plenty of soy sauce, which adds tons of sodium, and, of course, is fried in oil that could potentially cause you to pack on the pounds. If you want a healthier option, try ordering brown rice instead, which has been shown to protect against type 2 diabetes.

Use Stock Instead of Water

“Instead of water, use either vegetable or chicken stock. Homemade is ideal, but plenty of premade boxed stocks exist for convenience. Add stock to the hot pan with vegetables and toasted rice.” He explains that toasting the rice first adds a layer of nutty flavor and creates more depth.

Chinese cooks normally use soybean oil, vegetable oil, or peanut oil, all of which have a high smoke point. Peanut oil usually has a pleasant nutty flavor and is suitable not only for stir-frying but also for deep-frying. Canola oil, which has a high smoke point but a neutral flavor, is also a good choice.

What is the difference between fried rice and Chinese fried rice? ›

The usage of rice

But in Chinese rice, it is suggested to use leftover cooked rice to avoid the rice from being sticky. In Fried Rice, most quick-service restaurants (QSRs) use long-grain white rice like Basmati, whereas Jasmine Rice is used in Chinese Rice.

The secret to fried rice is butter. Nobody's gonna tell you that except for me, but butter makes the fried rice taste good. It gives it the right mouth feel, and it's. It's where it's at.

Butter Makes Your Fried Rice Taste Richer But Also Increases Fat Content. Since cooking with butter infuses food with a richer flavor and texture in general, you might find that frying leftover rice in oil leaves it bland in comparison.

The golden yellow color comes from the egg yolk. The method of making golden fried rice is different from classic fried rice. The egg is mixed with rice directly before stir-frying. If you want your golden fried rice to be more “yellow”, you can add more egg yolks.