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Hungry for dinner but not sure what to eat? Were you planning on ordering Chinese food?
Perhaps this Authentic Fried Rice recipe can help you change your mind! Got leftover rice in your fridge? As I discuss in my top 5 tips to explore your potential in the kitchen, Make Cooking Fun!, having an awareness of what’s in your fridge can guide you in what to cook when you’re in a pinch. If you’ve got some old rice sitting around, then this is THE recipe to use it in! Our six ingredient Chinese Egg Fried Rice recipe is super quick and easy to make and it’s totally family-friendly! I guarantee this will be a new go-to! In fact, I’m going to eat some for dinner tonight because I need something speedy as I finish up editing this video recipe, actually!
If making the perfect scrambled eggs is a pesky protein for you, then use this recipe as an opportunity to master them as part of your Live to Cook one month challenge! You can get the motivation and challenge to get started on your cooking journey for free by signing up to my newsletter, plus you’ll get all new recipes delivered right to your inbox!
Check out the video just to see how seamlessly our Egg Fried Rice comes together! If you haven’t already, I’d love it if you subscribe to my YouTube channel, and be sure to hit the bell button to get notified when my video recipes go live! I find having the videos to go alongside the written recipes will give you a tangible view of what’s going on so you know exactly what to do! Let’s get cooking!
What Is Traditional Chinese Egg Fried Rice?
Egg Fried Rice is a Chinese recipe that you pretty much need to order every time to you’re at a Chinese restaurant! It’s an essential rice dish that is made up of white rice, eggs, soy sauce, oil, and green onions. There are plenty of variations of Egg Fried Rice that are made with added veggies and/or proteins. Fundamentally, the basis of a fried rice comes from this simple recipe, and then other fried rice variations build on it. I’ll give ideas on how to build upon this simple egg fried rice later on in this post, so stay tuned! However, I do recommend you do try out this simple egg fried rice recipe on its own to appreciate the deliciousness of the eggs and all the other flavors going on! Plus, it’s amazing for a quick meal not only in terms of cook time but in terms of cleaning time!
What is The Secret To Chinese Fried Rice?▼
In my opinion, the key to a perfect restaurant-quality fried rice comes from the texture of your rice. At minimum, you must make your rice a day prior in order to allow the rice enough time to dry up. If you’re really in a pinch of time, then try to make your rice the morning of cooking your fried rice.
The next secret to an amazing Chinese fried rice is the assortment of veggies. In this recipe, we won’t have too many veggies in order to let the eggs shine and to keep the recipe easy and quick for weeknights.
Lastly, if you want to achieve an incredible Chinese egg fried rice that’s better than takeout, a wok plays a crucial role here. We’ll be cooking at high heat to really fry things up well!
What Rice Should I use For Chinese Egg fried rice?▼
Medium grain white rice is ideal for Egg Fried Rice, and you want to make sure you’re using old rice. The old rice allows the flavours to really glue onto the rice and allows the flavours to reach their full potential!
The authentic choice for an egg fried rice jasmine rice, but I find arborio rice is also a great choice. Other medium grain rice options for egg fried rice include Spanish rice such as valencia bomba or carnaroli. These rices are sturdy and will be able to withstand you mixing it around vigorously.
However, I actually used basmati rice in this recipe and it turned out just fine! If you don’t have any medium grain rice, then feel free to go with basmati. Here I would really recommend that your rice is stale though!
What’s the Difference Between Dark Soy Sauce and Light Soy sauce?▼
This recipe will be using dark soy sauce, as you’ll soon learn that it’s a staple for restaurant-style fried rice!
I’ll first dive into explaining what soy sauce is. It’s a thin dark sauce that is made with wheat, fermented soy beans, salt and fungi. It’s most popular in Chinese cooking but other Asian cuisines such as Japanese, Thai, Korean and Indonesian (including Indo-Chinese/Hakka!), now use soy sauce in their cooking. Often, “light soy sauce” refers to lower-sodium soy sauce because “regular” soy sauce contains a hefty amount of salt due to the preservatives!
On the other hand, when you compare your traditional soy sauce to dark soy sauce, “regular” soy sauce is actually called “light soy sauce.” Soy sauce here, whether it is higher in sodium content or not. There is a significant difference between dark soy sauce Dark soy sauce is visibly different because it is thicker and - as the name suggests - darker than regular soy sauce. The dark colour of dark soy sauce comes from the fermentation process. Dark soy sauce consists of the soybeans fermenting for a longer period of time than regular soy sauce.
Furthermore, the dark soy sauce actually tastes stronger than regular soy sauce because of the fermentation process. Dark soy sauce also contains palm sugar molasses and dark brown sugar which are not present in typical soy sauce. As a result, the dark soy sauce is more on the sweet side than the regular salty soy sauce.
A key difference between dark soy sauce and light soy sauce is their use cases. Dark soy sauce is ideal for braising, for marinating protein, and for adding colour to a dish. In contrast, while we use regular soy sauce for cooking, it’s an excellent dipping sauce because it is thin.
Due to their differences, recipes tend to use the two soy sauces together to achieve the bold dark colour of the dish while also adding some flavour. At first, I couldn’t find dark soy sauce, and I found a way to get a dark colour without it and by simply using regular soy sauce. However, the tables have turned and in this recipe I’m relying just on dark soy sauce to get an amazing colour and flavour here!
What Oil Do You Use For Restaurant-Style Egg Fried Rice?▼
I’ll be using vegetable oil for our Restaurant-Style Egg Fried Rice. This is the perfect oil to use because the flavor is neutral and it’s budget-friendly. Many fried rice recipes use regular sesame oil in order to achieve a nutty flavor, but I wanted to keep the flavours pretty simple here, as the name of the recipe suggests! Another excellent option for this recipe is peanut oil.
Do I Have to Use a Wok for Fried Rice?▼
A high quality wok can withstand high temperatures. Furthermore, its non-stick coating permits you to use less oil when cooking. Additionally, a wok’s tall ends and its overall deep round shape allows you to effectively toss your food to ensure even cooking. For restaurant-quality stir fries, this is the tool to do that job!
However, if you don’t have a wok, then please don’t let that stop you from making this dish! However, if frying is your end goal, then nothing will beat the tool that’s designed to do the job exactly. In fact, I actually would recommend a Chinese wok for best results, which I don’t have!
Why Make This Super Simple Egg Fried Rice Recipe?
- Fast recipe: Amazing for weeknights! This can be ready in about 10 minutes!
- One-pan meal: All the magic in our Super Simple Egg Fried Rice comes from your skillet or wok! The eggs, veggies, and rice will all be made here, so you won’t need to worry about a difficult cleanup!
- Few ingredients: Only 6 ingredients which consists of household staples!
- Awesome for picky eaters: This egg fried rice recipe is so simple in flavors that it’s absolutely kid-friendly! This will be the perfect quick meal to whip up for grown-ups and kids, so you don’t have to stress about weeknight family meals!
- Budget-friendly: Making your egg fried rice at home will certainly be cheaper than ordering it from a restaurant.
- Make-ahead friendly: While I do recommend you enjoy our incredible Egg Fried Rice fresh, if you really need to make this for a meal later on in the day or in the week, then this is the perfect dish to cook when you’ve got some minutes to spare and then you can easily portion it out, store it, and reheat! Get those details later on in this post!
Nutritional Information for Egg Fried Rice Like a Chinese Restaurant
- Gluten-free: If using gluten-free soy sauce
- Vegetarian
- High in protein
- High in fiber with veggies
Tools Needed for Simple Egg Fried Rice
Tips for an Amazing Chinese Egg Fried Rice
- I would suggest creating a wok hei effect for this stir fry by heating your wok without oil until smoking hot and only then adding the oil and starting to cook. This prevents the oil from deteriorating at high temperatures while the wok is getting ready to flavor the stir fry.
- Remember to use stale cold rice for this recipe, planning ahead for this dish is key.
- Prepare every ingredient needed for the stir fry before cooking to ensure everything is at an arm’s length while stir frying.
- Make use of a wok that retains heat well - this will help cook the dish faster and more efficiently.
- A stir fry needs a level of organization, so plan your steps towards the dish before starting to cook since time becomes blurry when the wok gets hot.
Ingredients for Better Than Takeout Egg Fried Rice
The FULL PRINTABLE recipe card with individual ingredient quantities and the recipe instructions can be found at the bottom of this post, or by pressing the “Jump to Recipe” button. Additionally, you can save the recipe for later and scale the recipe based on how many portions you want to make, and the individual ingredient measurements will adjust automatically! No need for ratios and calculations!
- Rice: Cold day-old rice that’s medium or short grain will yield the best results. If you’re struggling with cooking the perfect fluffy white rice, check out my complete guide on mastering white rice here.
- Eggs: We’ll scramble eggs with the oil.
- Oil: Neutral oil of your choice to fry the eggs and the rice and vegetables.
- Ginger: Thinly sliced ginger to balance out the heat of the green chilies.
- Green chilies: This will add some heat to your egg fried rice. Feel free to completely omit them if you’re very sensitive. If you want a spicier dish, then add more.
- Soy sauce: To get an Egg Fried Rice that looks like those from Chinese restaurants, you’ll want to use dark soy sauce. However, if you don’t have it on hand, that’s no problem! A hack to get you to achieve the dark color with regular soy sauce is to mix in some oyster sauce.
- White pepper: The traditional seasoning for an authentic Chinese egg fried rice is white pepper, so I recommend this. Of course, if you don’t have ground white pepper, you can definitely use regular pepper.
- Green onion: Mixed in with our other goodies in the fried rice. We’ll chop the greens and whites from the green onions separately.
You may notice that there’s no salt in this recipe. The dark soy sauce is much saltier than light soy sauce, so we don’t need to add any! You can if you really feel the need to, but I was able to omit it.
How to Make Egg Fried Rice
Combine the chopped white parts of the scallions/green onions with the ginger and the green parts with the green chillies.
Recommended: Create a wok hei effect for this stir fry by heating your wok without oil until smoking hot and only then adding the vegetable oil.
Add the whisked eggs to the hot oil and start stirring to scramble them.
Once creamy and scrambled, add the green onion and ginger mix. Mix well and cook for 30 seconds.
Add the rice using a spoon and toss well with the egg. Break any lumps of rice and check if the wok is too dry. Add oil and ensure the stir fry is still sizzling. Add soy sauce, by drizzling it around the edges of the wok and toss well.
Add white pepper and MSG if using.
Add the green onion and chillies mix and toss again.
Serve hot right away.
Variations for Chinese Egg Fried Rice
- Add protein: As mentioned earlier in this post, variations of egg fried rice build upon this base recipe. If you love beef, then try out my Beef Fried Rice recipe. It’s got steak strips with a special sauce. You’ll also see how the substitute for dark soy sauce comes into play! Other meat and seafood options that would be delicious to add to your egg fried rice include chicken breast, pork, and shrimp. If you don’t eat meat, you can add tofu, tempeh, or even paneer!
- Throw in veggies: If you want to add more colors to your dish, then feel free to do so! Any vegetables that are left over in your fridge can be excellent here! You can use frozen or fresh vegetables, such as peas, carrots, corn and/or green beans. You can also try adding in some kimchi to boost the flavor!
- Change the rice: Use whatever rice you’ve got or switch up the rice choice to see which is your favourite! You could test out short grain rice varieties, bomba rice, arborio, or even long-grain rice like basmati, or even brown rice to find your favourite! For someone who’s watching their carbohydrate intake, cauliflower rice is not off-limits at all!
- Heat: If the green chilies aren’t enough for you, try topping your egg fried rice with chilli garlic sauce or a drizzle of sriracha!
Storing Leftover Egg Fried Rice
I think that Egg Fried Rice is best served fresh, but if you have prepared a large batch for a later meal or if you have leftovers, store the contents into an airtight container and place in the refrigerator. Due to the eggs in the recipe, this fried rice will stay fresh in the fridge for about 3 to 4 days. Reheating is super easy - just place in the microwave and heat for about 2 to 3 minutes, or until entirely warmed through.
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