The Best Fried Rice You'll Ever Make (Restaurant-Quality)

Hi, my name is Taka Sakaeda.

I'm a professional chef,

and today I'm gonna show you the best way

to make fried rice at home.

[rice thumps in pan]

We'll be going over techniques the pros use

to make the perfect fried rice.

This is Fried Rice 101.

Fried rice is a dish that you can have any time

of the day, whether that's breakfast, lunch, or dinner,

or snacks in between.

In terms of the cooking process of making fried rice,

if you have a really strong fire and a really big wok,

you can be done in a couple minutes.

Let's get started.

[soft guitar music]

One of the most important things

about making a good fried rice is to make sure

that each rice is separated and fried evenly.

The rice that I'm using today is a Japanese

short grain rice.

This rice tends to have a little bit higher starch content

and also a little bit higher fat content,

which is what makes it so delicious.

I have some leftover rice.

I'm just gonna put this out

on the sheet and just using my hand here

just trying to separate and make this as even as possible.

Once we dry this out

the starch will be a little bit easier to manage

and we'll be able to separate each grain of rice.

Another reason why we want to go

through this process is so that the rice fries properly

and does have a nice crispy texture, but will also help so

that this pan doesn't steam up while we're frying the rice.

Taking this extra step of drying it out

and separating each kernel before we put it into the pan,

this will guarantee you better results.

So now that we have the rice pretty evenly separated

into this sheet tray, I'm gonna go ahead and just put this

into the fridge and let it dehydrate overnight.

You can feel definitely on this top surface here it is dry.

And as we flip to the other side, we can see a little bit

of moisture still remaining on the bottom here.

But now we can go ahead

and start to crumple up each grain and separate this.

So now that I have these large chunks out

I'm gonna go ahead and rinse off my hands,

put a little oil in my hands, and I'm gonna start to try

and separate each grain from each other.

After this process, do not put this back in the fridge.

We actually do want to bring this

at least to room temperature.

The reason for that is also temperature control

as we're cooking in the wok or in the pan.

If the rice is too cold,

it'll then make the pan get cold very quickly,

which is also really bad for the fried rice process.

Now that our rice is ready, we can go ahead

and move on to prepping our other ingredients.

[soft guitar music]

I'm gonna go ahead and start with the scallions here

and just grabbing the bunch here

and just cutting nice and thin rounds.

There sometimes is some kind of dirt and sand in between

so I do like to rinse this after I cut them.

I definitely will suggest to stay away

from any ingredients that are very watery

so that this pan doesn't steam up

while we're frying the rice.

So we're trying to avoid any kind of moisture

while we're having the rice in the pan.

We're gonna just set this aside and we're gonna work

on the onions next, just keeping the back intact here.

Go ahead and make incisions here.

And then from here we're just gonna cut

against the slices that we made earlier.

I have here 51/60 sized shrimp.

These have already been peeled and de-veined,

which you can purchase just as is.

These particular eggs, these are Jidori eggs,

eggs specific from certain types of chickens,

has really deep yellow color,

which is is gonna be a great visual for the finished dish.

If you can't find eggs like this,

just fine to use regular eggs.

We're just gonna go ahead and beat the eggs

until both the whites and the yolks are fully incorporated.

We're ready to cook.

[soft guitar music]

What we're gonna be doing here is cooking everything

in stages.

This is all about temperature control

and making sure that the wok

and your pan is super hot throughout this entire process.

Generally, the home kitchen, the flame is much weaker

than what we are used to in a professional kitchen.

And so by separating each

of the ingredients and cooking them separately

this is really gonna help to ensure

that we can maintain that temperature.

Because of the shape of the wok itself,

it is in a bowl shape,

so it actually increases the surface area.

And so the way it's designed,

the flames should be carrying up the sides of this wok.

And so whenever we're cooking in the wok,

we want to make sure to be spreading

out all the ingredients all the way

up to the sides so that we're maximizing the surface area.

So now we have our wok, it's getting pretty hot.

I'm just gonna add some oil here.

So we wanna make sure

that the entire surface is covered with the oil.

The oil is smoking, and so I'm gonna just take this

off the heat at this point, let it cool down for a second,

and I'm gonna put the eggs in and mix it really well.

So the reason why we're doing this,

the pan is already hot and you can see the eggs even

with the residual heat is already kind of cooking through.

What I'm trying to achieve here is no color, and again

reusing these beautiful Jidori eggs,

that bright yellow color.

So I don't want any browning to occur from this process.

Right before it's fully cooked

I'm gonna pull it out and place it into the side dish.

Now that the eggs are done

I'm gonna put the wok back on the fire,

getting the pan rack up to really hot temperature,

just enough oil to cover the surface.

Also, we want to only partially cook this.

We don't want to cook this all the way through.

And so once I put this in,

I'm gonna season all the shrimp,

and just let it sit on one side.

And once we kind of see the color start to come out,

it shouldn't really take long at all.

I'm gonna go ahead and toss this

and try to get the other side to cook

throughout the same amount.

This should really take less

than a minute to get this to halfway cooked.

And you can see now the color has changed

and kind of this orangish pink color is now coming

out from the shrimp.

And the moment that we see that any

of the raw color on the surface is gone

we're gonna go ahead and take this off the heat.

This is ready.

This is the most critical and important stage

and so we want to really get this pan now ripping hot,

as hot as we can get it.

What we're trying to achieve is to get all the moisture

from the surface of the rice to expel and evaporate.

And if the wok is not hot enough, we end up pulling

out moisture from the rice and it's actually

gonna create more steam and more sogginess,

which is the opposite of what we're looking for.

Smoking hot pan.

Throw our onions in.

Gonna go ahead and give this the light seasoning,

getting some nice color.

And for the amount of shrimp and the amount

of eggs I have, we can use about maybe half of this rice.

We're trying to utilize the entire surface area of the wok.

[pan sizzling]

Now I'm putting the onions on top

of the rice so that the onions can stop cooking

or at least slow down the cooking

of the onions and just having the rice underneath

so that really focusing now on frying the rice,

trying my best to utilize the entire surface area

of the wok.

So I'm just pushing everything out.

And so that I have one layer of rice inside the wok.

It actually has a lot of surface area.

We wanna maximize and utilize that,

which is gonna help with the speed of the cooking

but also so that the pan doesn't steam

and it's not overloaded with product.

We can go ahead and hear now

that the rice is starting to pop.

And so this is a good indication

that now the water's evaporating

from the rice and it's starting to crisp the surface.

You do want to be careful here not to over fry this.

You can see here also there's a little bit

of clumping happening.

This is pretty normal.

Once we incorporate all the other ingredients

this will help to separate all the kernels one more time.

And so at this point, I think we're ready.

I'm gonna turn this temperature back up,

and I'm gonna reintroduce the other ingredients.

So I'm gonna put in the shrimp here and the eggs,

and make sure that the eggs are nice and broken up.

And now I'm gonna go ahead

and incorporate all these ingredients together.

And through this process I am looking

at the rice and making sure and trying to separate

if there are any clumps at this moment,

do the final seasoning of black pepper.

Introduce the soy sauce here.

And I'm just gonna add this to the edge of the wok.

And the reason why I'm doing that is I want really the aroma

from the soy sauce,

and I don't really need so much of the salinity,

which I can actually see here on the edge.

The soy sauce is kind of burnt onto the edge, and so a lot

of that salt is still remaining on the side of that wok.

In this fried rice I really want to highlight

the shrimp and the eggs.

So I'm using salt as my primary seasoning

and using the soy sauce as an extra aroma

and also kind of adding umami to the dish.

Just gonna go ahead and add a handful

of these scallions right at the end.

They're nice and thin

so it really doesn't take much to cook

through the scallions.

So I'm just using the residual heat here,

just to incorporate the scallions

and add this beautiful green.

So everything is now cooked.

I'm gonna finish this

with a little bit of scallions just for some color.

And there you have it, the perfect way to cook fried rice.

And now it's time to taste.

I'm going to try to get a little bit

of everything in this bite.

And what's really important here is all the

different textures that's happening here.

Shrimp is beautifully cooked, nice and tender.

The egg has a nice lusciousness and softness to it.

The onions has that little bite in the center

and then the scallions have a different kind of almost

crunchy kind of texture.

And then the rice itself has nice little crust

on the outside, but still very soft

and fluffy in the center.

I think that this came out really well,

and having all those different flavors and different

different textures in here,

I mean, this is a great fried rice.

Fried rice to me is very nostalgic.

This is something that I grew up eating a lot.

And so anytime that there's any rice left over

or you just have a lot of ingredients,

a lot of vegetables, that you want to throw into one dish,

this is a great way to utilize both.

Just by learning a few techniques

and understanding a few concepts here

you can go ahead and expand your fried rice adventure.

[piano music]

Oh yeah, fantastic.