Holy moly! This cooking rice kerfuffle
Created Tuesday, 28th July 2020, 18:48 by Whykay
If folks haven’t watched the How to make egg fried rice video from BBC Good Foods and all the reaction videos since and many Asians/Chinese screaming out in horror, you should check it out to see why we are gobsmacked. 😱
(Update: Removed Uncle Roger's video)
TBH, I feel sorry for her, but in this day and age of internetz, why haven’t BBC Good Foods found someone who’s Chinese or Thai or Japanese, etc. to cook egg friend rice? Anyone who grew up or trained in cooking Chinese/Asian dishes? Understandably, I kept saying why the rice is not washed, and measure with your finger is so much easier.
I’ve never cooked rice in a pot, my parents (the restaurant use to make rice this way in massively huge pots before the huge rice cookers came along that made life much easier for staff… washing those huge pots was no fun at all, believe you me, even with all the soaking). All I know is when you cook rice in a pot, don’t open the lid and cook until the waters all absorbed, turn off heat and let it sit for 5-10 mins. That latter part is also true if you use a rice cooker, let the rice sit for 5-10 mins after it finished cooking.
But at home, this is a great way to use leftover rice (because I know I make way too much rice and just figured it’ll be fried rice or congee the next day or so).
Everyone cooks slightly differently, I was thought by mom and also fond memories helping my aunt and uncle at their takeaway… heat up wok with oil on high, put a bit of egg in there, then toss in the boiled rice (this is cooled boiled rice, in takeaways/restaurants, it’s hard to have leftover night rice if it’s really busy, they go through a lot of rice).
Toss the contents, add a bit of seasoning (usual salt, pepper), add egg and try to coat the rice with the egg. It’s easier if you toss it… at home, this gets messing, harder on a non-gas stove top, but stir-frying is fine.
Turn down the heat to low to medium setting. Toss in whatever you want, chicken pieces, veg, peas (defrosted)… literally to me fried rice is leftover food, so anything else you feel like tossing in is fine as long as it’s all hot and cooked.
Remember, frying or reheating leftover rice if not cooked properly can cause food poisoning, higher chance of bacteria occurring (not fun fact).
Now I’ve seen people add oyster sauce (which I’ve never seen at home or restaurant), but we use soy sauce. But sure, why not add oyster sauce as well, Lee Kum Kee is my favourite brand.
Toss it around a bit more, making sure everything is coated and serve it up piping hot. Don’t forget to add your chopped spring onions afterwards.
When me and my brother were growing up (we treated Irish Canto food served at restaurant and own ethnic food cooked at home as the same tbh), we put ketchup as a condiment in our fried rice. I don’t understand why people put so much soy on their fried rice, it’s like swimming in it… this was observation when I was helping out washing dishes at my parents’ restaurant back when… gosh, that must have been around 30 years ago!
Anyway, I came across another video that people are rounding on, it’s Deliah’s how to make boiled rice video with BBC Good Foods from 5 years ago!
The way she did it at the beginning reminded me of how you start cooking risotto. She did say to keep lid on and make sure the rice absorbs all the water and that’s how you know it’s cooked.
That made me wonder… it would be interesting to see how other cultures who have rice as their staple and see how they prepare and cook rice. I’m sure there are different ways as there are different types of rice. I sure find different grains of rice cooks differently even with the rice cooker. Basmati comes out as individual grains, Thai fragrant rice is fluffy and a little sticker. Brown and black rice needs a bit of soaking before cooking, but I normally mix these with my normal rice and cook it normally in my rice cooker (and yes, I wash my rice until the water is clear… and the water is used to water my plants in the garden).
How do people prep and cook their rice? How do you cook your (egg) fried rice?
But check this out… Hersha, the poor girl got so attacked for her rice cooking skills. It was on BBC World News, and we can blame the BBC Good Foods for how the rice is cooked:
But there’s some nice news though from the both of them:
Totes looking forward to that video collab! 🙌🥰