Friday Food – 4

Ever munched your way through a Chinese takeaway and wished that you could figure out how to do Egg Fried Rice for yourself? Well, it’s not such a big ask. This week’s Friday Food is based loosely on the Ken Hom Fried Rice recipe: it requires a large Chinese pan (with suitable stirring implement!), and assumes you’ve already boiled the rice.

All you need now is one egg per portion of rice, and some oil to go in the pan: sesame oil is nice, but olive will do too.

Pour just a little oil into the pan, then warm it up gently and move the oil around as much of the surface as possible. Take a couple of minutes over this, then turn up the heat and get the oil to the point where it’s starting to get smoky.

Now the rice goes into the pan. Give it a good stir, getting it coated with the hot oil, for a minute or so, and then get it all in the middle of the pan and pat down so you have a shallow dish shape in the rice.

Then break the egg(s) into that shallow dish shape. Carefully fold the rice over the egg, over and over. This will distribute the egg throughout the rice, and with the intense heat, the egg will cook quickly: another minute should be enough.

And there it is: Egg Fried Rice done at home, and as good as you get at the restaurant or takeaway.