Best Chinese egg fried rice recipe

What Rice to use?

• Preferably use long-grain rice, as I said before, this type of rice is less moist. The jasmine or basmati rice is ideal for this type of preparation.
• In most Asian countries, rice is cooked in the morning and eaten throughout the day, however, in Europe, we usually cook the rice when we want to eat it. 
• The simple gesture of cooking rice before is very important, it helps the rice to stay drier. I always recommend that you cook the rice in advance as it is always the best choice for this dish. Chinese egg fried rice
• When you wash the rice, it is important to remove all the starch without moving the rice too much. Remember that at this time of the process, wet rice is more tender and the grain can break easily.

“Amount of water for grams of rice”

• As I already wrote in the recipe, the classic method is: water to cover one more finger above the rice. However, another method is to accurately weigh the water. If you find a scale in your hostel or you have one at home, you can follow these steps.
• The general rule for these types of rice is to weigh the corresponding rice plus one-fifth of the weight in water. It seems complicated like that, but now I explain with numbers so you can understand better.
• If you have 200g of rice, the amount of water will be 200ml of water (or grams, which is the same referring to water) plus 1/5 of the weight (200: 5 = 40), in total for 200g of rice you have to add 240 ml of water to cook it to its perfection.

“Scrambled egg”

• By the way, in the recipe you can see that when beating the eggs you should add a few drops of lemon juice. That makes the egg fluffier, amazing right? This is a trick that my friend who is a Thai Chef showed me when we used to work together and he also told me that this trick is used a lot in Thai kitchen

“Cut the vegetables”

• Not confident with the knife? No problem, you can easily help yourself with a grater, it is the perfect tool for cutting carrots and other vegetables. Also garlic and ginger can be finely grated. The end result for this preparation is almost the same and without any effort and risk of cutting your fingers.

PS: the onion or shallot are not very good for grater !!!

• Another method that you can use with some vegetables such as carrot, is to cut it into slices with a potato peeler and into thin strips with a knife.
• The version of Chinese fried rice that I offer you in this post is a totally vegetarian version. If you want, you can add any ingredient, such as chicken, ham, seafood, tofu or vegetables. This recipe is a very versatile preparation for your trips and it works well with practically anything.
• The only thing that I recommend you is to sauté all the ingredients separately in advance and reserve them until the last moment. This way it will help you not to drop the temperature of the pan abruptly and it will prevent the rice from sticking to it.
• Do you want to add soy sauce or oyster sauce to enhance the flavour of your dish? No problem, do it! Almost at the end when you are rectifying the salt and before adding the glutamate.

Monosodium glutamate?

• Guys, I’m not speaking Chinese I just want to teach you how to prepare authentic Chinese rice ahah! 
• Monosodium glutamate is an ingredient that is used in many dishes of Chinese, Japanese and even Peruvian / Chinese cuisine (chaufa).
• This ingredient is partly responsible for the fact that the classic sweet and sour chicken from the Chinese restaurant nearby is so tasty and you want to eat more and more of this dish.
• It is also responsible for providing the Umami flavor (one of the 5 basic flavors). If we suppose to use a word it could be defined as “Tasty” because it derives from two words, Umai (delicious) and mi (flavor).
• As I explained, monosodium glutamate can be considered a salt used as a flavor enhancer. Many times it is already present naturally in some ingredients such as cheeses, mushrooms, tomatoes, seaweed. 
• However, there is a synthetic version that is currently produced with chemical synthesis and fermentation. You probably don’t know, but you eat MSG every day.
• Take a look at some labels for canned food, sauces (such as oysters for example) or cold cuts. If you see the additive code E-621 in the ingredients, that product has monosodium glutamate. It can also be referred to as MSG, Chinese salt, Ajinomoto or sodium salt.

Is it harmful to eat monosodium glutamate?

• If you try to search on the internet you will find a lot of information about this topic. However, most of the information doesn’t come from credible sources and they might be false or incorrect.
• I was very interested in this topic so I did a lot of research and I also asked professionals in the sector. I personally worked for many years in Asian restaurants and  I wanted to know to what extent glutamate could or could not be added to dishes.
• The result and my personal opinion about this ingredient are that it is neither more nor less harmful than other ingredients, as long as they are consumed in large quantities (such as salt or sugar).
• This is not medical advice nor does it want to be, as I already told you it is my personal consideration based on my searches and interest in my profession.
• Despite this, logic has led me to think that if glutamate is used in large amounts and on a daily basis, it can clearly cause problems like the rest of the two ingredients that I have listed above.
• To prepare rice from time to time with that authentic “Chinese” flavor you have to use (always if you want) a small amount of MSG and surely you will not have any problem.
• According to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and due to the absence of evidence of the toxicity of monosodium glutamate in humans it allows the use of glutamate in the kitchen in the food industry and currently sets a limit of 30 mg of monosodium glutamate for each kg of weight of a person (a person weighing 60 kg could eat 1.8 g of glutamate daily without any problem).
• So, if you eat fried rice or Chinese food from the restaurant nearby frequently, you have already been eating glutamate for a long time. So adding a little MSG to this recipe will surely not change your life.
• What you are going to achieve is to give your dish a “tastier” touch. 
• If for any reason you don’t want to use it, it is not a problem at all. You can also prepare delicious fried rice without glutamate.
• Did you like the recipe? Share with us your tips and tricks or if you tried to cook this dish. We would love to see your recipe.