Quick Frugal Recipe!

We eat this frugal meal every week. We eat it without meat most of the time, but we have added chicken before or even a little bacon that we buy in bulk for $1.49lb to mimic a recipe we once had at a Chinese buffet. The key to making great fried rice is to use cold rice. If you use hot rice your fried rice will stick together and be gummy. When I make rice for a meal, I just double it and save back half for making fried rice, so it will be cold. Go here to see how to make the perfect rice. This is open to interpretation based on your family preferences, but if you use the seasoning and technique it calls for, you can pretty much use whatever ingredients you want. This serves about four people and I double it for our family of six. It also takes less than ten minutes to cook this if you do your prep work ahead of time. Here is how we do it.

1/2 cup diced carrots

2 eggs

1-2 cloves of crushed garlic

1 cup of precooked, diced, meat of your choice (cooked pork is recommended, if you want meatless, just add more veggies)

2 1/2 cups of rice

1/2 cup of chopped celery

1/4 cup of green onion

2 T soy sauce

1 tsp salt

2 T sugar



Take a skillet or wok and heat a tablespoon of oil over medium high heat. Put your carrot and garlic in and stir fry for about 30 seconds, being sure not to burn your garlic. Then add your eggs and scramble them into your carrots. Stir fry them for about 30-40 seconds making sure to break up big pieces of eggs as you go. Add your meat. Stir fry that for about a minute. Add your rice, because it is cold it is best to separate it with a fork as you scrape it out of the bowl, that way you can eliminate clumps. Lower your heat to medium so your rice will not burn. Add about 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, more or less, depending on how salty you like it. Add 1 teaspoon of salt and two tablespoons of sugar. Turn your heat of to medium high and continue stir frying about two minutes. Put in your celery and green onion and stir fry for one more minute. Then enjoy!