Late last week, I went into a fugue state while standing in front of my open fridge. Nothing happened for a while until several things suddenly collided in my mind, and I realized that I had most of the ingredients for fried rice in my fridge. All I needed were eggs and shiitake mushrooms (called pyogo in Korean).
I began building the fried rice last night, but despite how simple a concept fried rice is, it requires a hell of a lot of chopping, slicing, dicing, and mincing. I didn't finish prep last night, and I was dead tired, so when I woke up early this morning, I continued prep and began cooking, but had to stop cooking once 11AM rolled around, as it was time to get ready for work: my 2PM gig at KMA. Once I got back from KMA, I continued cooking, and now you may behold the fruits (or the meat, starch, and vegetables) of my labor.
Ingredients, in no particular order:
salt
pepper
sesame oil
canola oil
powdered garlic
fresh garlic
green chili peppers (gochu)
red and yellow bell peppers
shiitake mushrooms
white onion
eggs
spam
jumbo shrimp
love
care
This should probably be named "Ironic Fried Rice" because everything except the rice got pan-fried. I have no rice cooker, so I make rice the old-fashioned way: 4 parts water, 3 parts rice in a thick-bottomed pot; bring to a boil, then immediately take to a simmer and leave for twenty minutes. Some nurungji (crispy, burned bottom layer of rice) is possible with this method, but there was almost none in this case. I simply tossed the rice into that giant metal bowl with all the other ingredients, then mixed the hell out of everything. Perfection.
So, basically, it's more like a bibimbap, just with fried rice ingredients.
ReplyDeleteThat about sums it up, but based on the fried-rice recipes I've seen, all I'd need to do is put my mixture in a bokkeum pan, add a bit of soy sauce, fry everything up, and that'd be enough for this to qualify as fried rice. I must say, I like un-fried rice better. But I did forget to add the damn peas, which are still sitting in my freezer.
ReplyDeleteIf you do ever decide to make this as fried rice, one tip I can give you is to not use freshly cooked rice. You're better off using leftover rice that maybe has been sitting in the refrigerator or something. It's had time to dry out a little and will thus make a better fried rice.
ReplyDeleteAlso, for a good fried rice, the soy sauce is not as important as the oil. If you want that Chinese-style fried rice taste, for example, you've got to use green onion oil (파기름).
It's a good thing I let my rice sit for almost a whole day, then (even though I didn't make real fried rice)!
ReplyDeleteNot sure I've ever tried green-onion oil. Sounds interesting. And I didn't add any soy sauce this time around, but to be honest, I'm not missing it.
Yeah, I've made fried rice without soy sauce and didn't miss it, either. I don't think it's all that important, at least not to my taste. Then again, I don't usually like very salty foods.
ReplyDeleteFor what it is worth, in addition to letting the rice sit out, sometimes I beat an egg and then toss the rice in the raw beaten egg before the final fry. I started doing this after seeing some well-known Chinese chef do it on TV. The effect is nice. I also add some chunks of scrambled egg too (guess I like egg).
ReplyDeleteIt all sounds delish to me.
ReplyDelete