Beautiful Shrimp Fried Rice photo!
The first time I attempted to cook fried rice on my own, I was a teenager and my parents and little brother were on vacation. I stayed home to attend summer school and to enjoy a little freedom living on my own for a couple of weeks.
Since my Mom was the queen in the kitchen, I didn’t really cook too much back then. My job was just to eat and enjoy her wonderful home cooked meals. But that week, after 3 days of instant ramen, I was longing for something a little more substantial. Too lazy to bike to the market, I decided on fried rice. I steamed a batch of rice and found enough bits of vegetables to make the dish.
It was a total disaster. Mushy, soggy and goopy. Back to Top Ramen for another 10 days.
When the family returned, I told Mom about my fried rice misfortune and she laughed, “You better start learning from me before you go off to college or you’ll starve!” And a crash course in fried rice followed the next day.
So here I am to teach you what I learned from my Mom. These are her secrets to light, fluffy and flavorful fried rice, no matter what ingredients you use.
Rules for Best Shrimp Fried Rice
Use previously chilled leftover rice
Here’s rule #1. You have to use yesterday’s (or earlier) cooked rice as it’s had a chance to dry out a bit in the refrigerator. The heat of the pan and the soy sauce will re-steam and hydrate the leftover rice. If you try to use freshly cooked, hot rice (like I did years ago,) you’ll end up with too much moisture in the rice and will make a heavy mess in the pan.
High heat is essential in cooking fried rice
But high heat doesn’t mean that you need super high BTU’s or a gas stove. All it takes is a bit of patience to let your pan or wok heat up. The high heat ensures that whatever ingredients that you put into the pan gets fried quickly and that each grain of rice gets hot to the core.
Fry ingredients separately
Fried rice has many different ingredients, and in my home it’s usually just a mixture of whatever vegetables, meats or seafood I can scrounge up from the refrigerator or freezer. But whatever the ingredients, you want to make sure that you can taste each individual one. To do this, you’ve got to fry your meat or seafood first, remove from the wok or pan when 80% cooked through and then toss it back in towards the end of the stir fry to finish cooking. Because if you try to fry all of the ingredients at the same time in the same pan, they’ll all compete for “wok time” and everything will end up tasting exactly the same!
No no touching!
A common mistake of stir frying is to constantly poke, prod, turn and flip every second. In a restaurant kitchen where flames are so powerful they can singe your brows, chefs have to keep things moving. But in home kitchens, our stovetops need a little more time to do their work to heat up and cook our food. If you keep poking at the rice, the grains will break, release more starch and turn the entire thing goopy. It will never have a chance to fry correctly…not enough “wok time” as my Mom likes to say. The best thing is to do is to spread out the rice, use the entire cooking surface of the pan and just leave it alone. Put your spatula down and back away from the stove for a minute. Give the rice a chance to heat up. Then flip, toss and redistribute the rice, again spreading it out and leaving it alone to cook another side.
PrintShrimp Fried Rice Recipe
Serves 4
8 ounces small uncooked shrimp, shelled and deveined
1/4 teaspoon salt (or 1/2 tsp kosher salt)
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons cooking oil (divided)
3 eggs, beaten in a small bowl
2 stalks scallion or green onion, minced
4 cups previously cooked leftover rice, grains separated well
3/4 cup frozen carrots and peas, defrosted
1 tablespoon soy sauce (use gluten-free soy sauce if you are making a gluten-free version)
1 teaspoon sesame oil
In a bowl, toss the shrimp with the salt, pepper and cornstarch. Let the shrimp marinate for 10 minutes at room temperature. Heat a wok or large sauté pan on high heat. When the pan is hot enough for a bead of water to instantly sizzle and evaporate, add only 1 tablespoon of the cooking oil and swirl to coat pan.
Now add the shrimp, quickly spreading out around the pan so that they are not overlapping. Let the shrimp fry, untouched for 30 seconds. Flip over and let the other side fry for 30 seconds, or until about 80% cooked through. Remove the shrimp from the pan onto a plate, leaving as much oil in the pan as possible.
Turn the heat to medium and let the pan heat up again. Pour in the eggs, stirring in a quick motion to break up and scramble the eggs. When the eggs are almost cooked through (they should still be slightly runny in the middle), dish out of the frying pan onto the same plate as the cooked shrimp.
Use a paper towel to wipe the same wok or sauté pan clean (no need to wash) and return to high heat with the remaining 1 tablespoon of cooking oil, swirling to coat. When the oil is very hot, add the green onions and stir fry until fragrant, about 15 seconds. Add in the rice and stir well to mix in the green onions throughout. Spread the rice all around the wok surface area and let the rice heat up, untouched until you hear the bottoms of the grains sizzle, about 1-2 minutes. Use the spatula to toss the rice, again spreading the rice out over the surface of wok or pan
Drizzle the soy sauce all around the rice and toss. Add the peas and carrots, the cooked eggs, shrimp and sesame oil, tossing to mix the rice evenly with all of the ingredients. Let everything heat back up again, until the rice grains are so hot they practically dance! Taste and add an additional 1 teaspoon of soy sauce if needed.
{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Jaden,
It looks delicious, but the two links below just point to the image! The link in the image itself seems to work, though.
Fried Rice is something I can eat everday!
) Hope you fix your links soon.
yummy!!! I can almost taste it.
typing in simplyrecipes gets you there!
Lovely looking bowl of fried rice. Now I’m ready for lunch!
I can attest to the need to use chilled day-old rice. My mother and grandmother always used cold day-old rice, didn’t stir too much and the rice was always perfect.
Beautiful site. I’m looking forward to becoming a regular visitor.
Cheers!
Simple steps and great tips! I am so hungry now. Must try it out soon!
Yes the leftover rice is the key!! You can just add any ingredients you want to a lovely fried rice!
It looks great and congrats on the guest gig at Elise’s blog
That’s why Chinese families love to ‘cook too much’ rice. There’s this, just in case someone’s still hungry insecurity. But it’s not wasted. The next day we have oh.. so yummy fried rice
oh looks so good. kinda like how my gramma does her fried rice!
Continue the great recipes Jaden! We loved your las vegas trip report!
Hi Jaden, We’re passing on the Brilliant Blog Award to you! We love your photos – so brilliant! Come to our site and follow the instructions and pass it on and nominate your some of your favorite sites too! =)
-K&H
This looks way better than any Shrimp Fried Rice I have ever seen. Now I want Chinese food for dinner tomorrow night.
Any kind of fried rice I love and Elsie’s blog is fantastic.
CHINESE SHRIMP FRIED RICE
——————————————————–
It looks very delicious, as the way i made, but i also put a little (a half thee spoon or one) curry to get the ultimate taste , it is personally
Any way fried rice is also the only one chinese which all peoples like it very
much, i already check in New York, San Franscisco, i mean in the USA , Singapore, Jakarta, Honkong, I mean in Asia, In Amsterdam, Paris, London, Rome, , Geneva, Barcelona, i mean in europe and and even in Dubai I believe all over the world. Do everybody realize it????????????????
Fried Rice greetings from Gandamora Pascal D. Siregar
Thanks for stopping by my blog!! I pretty much did everything wrong in my fried rice until I’ve read your post. I was definitely a rice stirrer and I never had the patience to wait for the oil to heat up.
Your blog is wonderful and the pictures are fantastic!! I love it!
This is sooo cool, I had just discovered Elise’s Blog like, say 3 or 4 months ago and fell in love with it… and I found yours yesterday… how cool that you too are sharing blog space! Right on, you both rock… and btw… you’re hot Jaden!
I was looking for a good shrimp fried rice recipe two days ago. I’m so glad I found your blog. It’s amazing what you have created here. Your talents are very inspiring. I will bookmark this for sure. Wonderful and delish!
Hi Jaden! I was so excited to try this recipe, but I might have messed up! I used day old uncle ben’s BROWN rice. And it was too mushy. sigh. Was I wrong in using brown rice? I almost used basmati or jasmine, but I wasn’t sure about that. So I went with brown…maybe I should have just stuck with plain ole white rice? HELP!!
jen
I tried this recipe out the other night and it turned out great (and it all disappeared so I know my guys liked it), it’s the best way to get my son to eat his veggies! Now I keep hoping we’ll have left over rice so I can try it again…
I’ve been really pleased with the recipes on your site,
Thanks,
Robin
I doubled the recipe as I knew my family would love this–they did and no leftovers. In fact, I made this dish twice in one week. I was in a tight schedule the second time so purchased a bag of already cooked shrimp, took off the tails, threw them in the mixture and no one knew the difference. Only thing I changed was I used chicken broth to cook the rice rather than water. This is an excellent recipe for most any kind of veggies too.
This is one of my favorite dishes. I can’t wait to try it.
Wow! This is treat is great. To bad I have allergy issues with shrimps. Anyways, great post.
http://www.foodista.com
Hey Jaden,
Made this tonight with your sweet ‘n sour chicken. Perfect! Thanks for what you do!
Yes! This is the absolutely correct way to do it! Unfortunately, it was by trial and error that I learned the right way to make fried rice. Try this recipe! You’ll LOVE it!
I know this comes, oh, 8 months after the original post, but I stumbled across it the other day while flipping through your Gluten Free adaptable section.
So I made it. And now I’m wondering. Would be wrong to eat this fried rice every night?
just made this tonight and it was delicious, appreciate the time honoured techniques too! Thanks again and congrats on the upcoming book, can’t wait to snag a copy.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for sharing the secret to making fried rice. I have been trying unsuccessfully for years to make the elusive perfect fried rice. I stumbled across your posting on Simply Recipes on Tuesday and decided to take the plunge once again. (Thankfully my poor, dear husband never complains…at least not to my face.) I was so excited and astonished when I turned out the best fried rice I’ve ever made that I texted everyone I knew about my success. I had finally reached the pinnacle of cooking and mastered the art of fried rice. I’m having my mom and sister over tonight because they don’t believe me.
Hey Jaden!
Love your blog:)
What kind of rice do you use for fired rice?
I like Jasmine rice. It’s light, fluffy.
Short grained rice is too sticky for me!
Yeah, I should have asked though what can I use instead of Jasmine rice, we don’t have it in Jordan. Would you think a mix of basmati and short grian would work?
Either, try with basmati first!
I’ve just made your Shrimp Fried Rice, and I can’t tell you how pleased I am.
Apparently, I’ve been making the same mistakes you did as a teenager. My rice was always mushy, and frankly, awful!
This time I’m happy to say, it was fantastic! I used chicken instead of shrimp, as I didn’t have any. But, who cares?! The method is the thing! Thanks so much.