Start a good day with breakfast fried rice
Homemade fried rice is one of my favorite comfort foods.
I can make it with leftover rice and a leftover hunk of meat or I can start from scratch and very quickly, using whatever I can find in the refrigerator, end up with something good to eat at lunch or dinner, or even breakfast.
That's right. Why not extend the love to the start of the day? And it's not a bad beginning at all. In fact, if you use brown rice, you'll be getting much more protein and about twice the fiber that you'd find in the average granola bar.
I first saw a recipe for Bacon and Eggs Fried Rice on The Kitchn food blog. The original recipe calls for frying the bacon then preparing the fried rice in that same pan using some of the bacon fat.
I'd rather take a slightly less sodium and cholesterol laden route and cook the rice and veggies in olive oil while the bacon crisps up in the oven — 300 degrees on a baking rack on a sheet pan, for about 20 or 25 minutes, flipping the slices a couple of times throughout. That gives me more control over the amount of fat and salt in the final rice. It also lets the bacon tend itself while I prep and cook the other ingredients.
You can use whatever kind of bacon works for you — turkey, tofu, whatever — and you certainly could use another protein — breakfast sausage would be yummy — or you could go vegetarian. You could even scramble some cheese into that first batch of eggs. Yum.
The leftovers are perfectly delicious when briefly reheated in the microwave, so you can get multiple breakfasts (or lunches or dinners) out of one batch.
Enjoy!
Breakfast Fried Rice
Serves 4-6
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
4 beaten eggs, divided
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium green or red bell pepper, chopped
5 cups cooked rice, fluffed and cooled (1½ cups raw rice cooked with 3 cups of water)
2 tablespoons soy sauce (more or less to taste)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
4-8 ounces cooked bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces
Heat a teaspoon or so of the oil in a nonstick frying pan over medium heat and add 3 beaten eggs and a bit of salt and pepper. Scramble them until they're fully cooked but still in relatively large curds, then remove them from the pan and set aside.
Add a couple more teaspoons of oil to the pan then sauté the chopped onion and pepper until the onion pieces are translucent, the pepper chunks are tender and the mix has begun to brown, snap and sizzle in the pan. Add the cooked rice and stir-fry until the onions, peppers and oil are mixed throughout the rice. If the rice seems dry, add a bit more oil.
Use your spatula to flatten the mixture a bit and let it cook. After a couple of minutes, when you hear it snapping and sizzling, stir it all together, then flatten it out again and let it cook for a couple more minutes. When the rice is good and hot, push it to the edges of the pan making a large well in the middle. Add another teaspoon or so of oil and your last beaten egg. Let it sit for a bit, then begin stirring the egg as you would if you were scrambling it. When it's about half or two-thirds cooked, stir everything all together, gently combining the rice and egg.
Next add some soy sauce. Be judicious. You want to taste the soy sauce but you don't want the rice to get too salty. Start with a or less tablespoon then keep tasting and adding bit by bit until it's to your liking.
Lastly, gently fold in the pieces of bacon and the scrambled eggs. Be careful not to break up the eggs too much. When everything's hot, it's ready to serve.
Original recipe from The Kitchn.
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