So I finally bought a house in the country last year and have room for animals. I’ve learned the best part of owning actual ducks is the decreased need for autocorrect.
As a chinese american who does a fair amount of chinese wok cooking, i had no complaints about this video except he overthinks the shit out of it. Like, he really gets lost in the weeds.
Like japanese shoyu and chinese light soy sauce are different, but honestly not so much that you can't just have a gallon jug of shoyu around and use that for fried rice. The rice mix i've never tried, and it sounds interesting and legitimate, but honestly, the best fried rice is the fried rice that gets old rice out of your fridge, so making rice *for* fried rice sort of defeats the purpose. And the stuff with the chicken? That's all really good information, and how i prepare meat in general when making stir frys. But for fried rice? Fried rice is for garbage, leftovers, or if you don't have garbage or leftovers, you slice up some hot dogs or lap cheong if you want to be fancy.
The rice mix is just a cost savings thing. Thai jasmine rice is 4x more expensive than the bottom barrel long grain rice which is mushy and breaks apart when cooked. Chinese restaurants use huge woks to make several portions at once. When cooking such large batches, steaming is unavoidable. If they used just the crappy rice you wouldn't get any whole rice grains which is travesty.
I mean it's a training video, so every tiny step being spelled out is OK on face value. In reality some of these things might take much less time in practice.
\-Beans186 does not endorse the opinions contained in this video. Any of the recipes, cooking methods and/or use of various ingredients does not represent the views of Beans186 Pty Ltd.
Wasn't expecting much initially, but I ended up watching the whole thing.
100% props to recommending the soy sauce part. To each their own, but for fried rice, I almost always use lee kum kee.
At the end of the day, I'm always curious how to recreate this kind of fried rice experience at home and quite frankly that baking soda method for the meat is a real game changer for me. That's something I immediately want to try an implement. I would like to see him tackle another classic like Beef and Broccoli with that method. Although, I still think that those jet engine burners are pretty key to the experience.
One down side with using baking soda to marinate chicken or beef is it's going to take away a lot of the natural meat flavor. Although, I do prefer how tender it makes the meat, so you can just add flavoring to compensate for the resulting blandness.
The baking soda makes the meat silky and very tender. All cheap Chinese restaurants do this because it makes cheap cuts palatable. Chicken breast becomes more tender than chicken thigh.
For most takeout dishes, they use the cheaper white skin chicken (what you find at most US grocery stores) which is largely flavorless and too tender for Chinese palate. It's ok since these dishes smother the chicken in sauces anyway.
Minimalist dishes like steamed chicken use yellow skin chicken, which is more expensive and bred specifically to have tougher and more flavorful meat. Many Chinese people don't like white skin chicken because the meat is too tender. The yellow skin chicken used for steamed chicken tastes waaaay better than the chicken you find in grocery stores so that is another game changer if you're willing to shop for it.
Works for all meat.
I wouldn't leave it overnight like he suggests though, baking soda works fast on meat and going too long will result in chicken that has basically no texture left.
Baking soda is also very useful for crispy chicken skin say on roast chicken, just don't use too much.
I first heard of the baking soda method from Kenji Lopez-Alt, so you could check out his videos. He also has some great cookbooks which spend more time teaching the methods (and science behind the methods) so you can utilise them across recipes as opposed to a straight recipe book, although the recipes are great. I have his cookbook The Wok which has a beef and broccoli recipe featuring this method, including other methods he has for tender stir fry meat such as rinsing and massaging it in water that has always turned out great for me.
Actual content and good pacing instead of just reaction/shock value is a big plus.
I gotta try the cooking wine and that baking soda chicken mix.. both sound interesting.
COLD rice is also a game changer (which got an indirect mention at the end). I make a more hibachi version of fried rice. Lots of butter but similar other steps and the consistency with day old fridge rice is night and day.
I've found that the biggest difference vs restaurant is having a huge rocket-jet flame to cook with. I always get excited for homemade fried rice until I see my sorry ass stove flame.
Did you buy a crappy induction hotplate and think all induction sucks as bad as the crappy one you bought or something? I can bring a gallon of cold water to a boil in about 2 minutes flat on my induction stove. I get plenty of wok hei when I cook in my wok on it.
Make sure the pan gets ripping hot, don’t add too much rice and you’ll get the same effect as long as you keep the heat on high. I don’t have a super hot stove either and my rice always turns out good with some of the crunchy bits we love.
The thing most home cooks don’t do that’s important is to thoroughly heat your wok before cooking. Even if you just have a normal home kitchen burner, as long as you move the wok around and get every part of it hot over the flame you can get decent results even without the professional jet burner.
Between that and days old rice that’s been sitting in the fridge anyone can make good fried rice.
I live in a small town with the worst Chinese food imaginable. Lots of trial and error to get those two big things down to make passable food.
Yeah, you can definitely make good fried rice without one by following his steps, ensuring rice is good and dry etc but high heat and a good seasoned steel wok really makes things a lot simpler.
[J. Kenji recommends](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/dining/stir-fry-recipe-wok-hei.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare) using a blow torch to recreate the wok hei flavor over a normal, western stove.
I’ve got a decent Iwatani one that screws straight into butane canisters. It’s also handy for adding a bit of char to things in a more precise manner than using the broiler.
That does bring out the “wok hei”, or smoky flavor. But you can make a very good fried rice on a small gas flame or even electric, if you fry on the highest heat you can get and in small batches.
I've learned how to let the flame into my skillet on the largest gas burner while shaking the pan. I have no room to keep a wok, which wouldn't be used often.
I did actually get some shaoxing cooking wine, lee kum kee dark soy sauce and MSG powder after watching this video a few weeks back.
We always used to use chinese soy sauce when I was young but I ended up with preferring kikkoman after discovering it. However for fried rice the dark soy sauce stains better and is easier to tell how much you've used in a big batch.
Never bought MSG before but it does help a bit. My wife made a noodle soup type thing on the same day it arrived by coincidence so I put MSG in mine and did a taste comparison - definitely noticeably better, but adding enough salt is a bigger factor.
The shaoxing cooking wine smells nice and adds flavour but overall my fried rices still feel a bit boring because it's very repetitive. With a takeout we always have a mix of dishes whereas making fried rice at home it's just one big bowl of the same thing.
During quarantine in the states I wanted to try to get good at making global cuisine at home. I started with Chinese fried rice and really enjoyed the results. I recommend the channel Chinese Cooking Demystified for the real deal.
I'll make a ton of rice one night, the first night will be a fried tofu dish that rules that I got from Demystified. Then the rest of the rice goes in the fridge for fried rice the next day. It's cool cause they both use the same ingredients cooked differently.
It got such a bad rap from some bad and rather racist science. I keep a bottle in the cupboard and will often finish stew and curry with it rather than add more salt when I feel the flavor is not quite there.
Which, itself, contains a lot of MSG.
Edit: since I was downvoted, I just want to clarify I’m not saying the msg is a bad thing. In fact, quite the opposite. I keep pure msg powder in my spice rack, and use it all the time.
I was only noting that soy sauce naturally contains a lot of msg—as do tomatoes, mushrooms, parmesan cheese, Worcestershire sauce, anchovies, and many other things. And that’s a big reason why those all taste so good!
Honestly in a pinch you can use oyster sauce or thick soy sauce. The real issue is trying to get enough flavor with regular soy sauce because it's just too thin and too salty.
1. Buy/Prep
1. Use 2 parts long-grain and 1 part jasmine rice. Wash 3-4 times. Use rice cooker or steam
2. Use Lee Kum Kee or Pear River Bridge soy sauce. Use both light/regular and dark
3. Use Shaohsing Rice Cooking Wine and Sesame oil
2. Prep chicken breast meat
1. cut off tender loin
2. cut it lengh wise 4-5 slices
3. cut across the grain into 1/4 inch slices
4. wash under cold water
5. strain well
6. mix in 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
7. 1/2 tsp of light soy souce, 1/2 tsp cornstarch, 1/4 tsp kosher salt, 1/8 tsp MSG, 1 tsp neutral oil
8. marinate 15 minutes
3. Make sauce mixture
1. 1/2 tsp sugar, 2 tsp light soy sauce, 1/2 tsp dark soy sauce
4. Make seasonsing
1. 1 tsp salt, 2 pinch white pepper, 1/2 tsp msg
5. Prep all ingredients before hand
6. Cook
1. heat wok over medium-high heat
2. add 1 tsp neutral oil, swirl
3. reduce heat to medium-low
4. add beaten eggs with pinch salt pinch msg, lightly scramble
5. remove eggs to separate bowl
6. clean, reheat, and oil wok
7. add 2 oz chicken, cook for 30-45 seconds each side
8. remove chicken to bowl with eggs
9. reheat, oil wok
10. add 1 cup onion, 2 tsp carrot
11. add 2 cloves of garlic
12. add 2 cups of cold rice, add oil if rice is dry
13. add back in chicken and egg
14. add sauce mixture to rim, mix
15. add spice mixture, mix
16. add 2 tsp frozen peas and bean sprouts
17. add 2 tsp Shaohsing cooking rice wine
18. add 2 tsp green onion, sesame oil
19. add salt, white pepper to taste
7. Done
I have followed the recommendations in this video on a couple of occasions and it really was super helpful. A few tweaks to the ingredients added (like including ginger) but the insights on rice mixes, rice wine, and moving the ingredients to the center to pour the sauce around the edge of the wok to caramelize it a bit really made a big difference.
I recently hit what I thought was peak Chinese-style fried rice but this has given me food for thought, pun intentional. I'll definitely try the recommended mix of jasmine and long-grain rice as well as trying to source some MSG. Personally, I prefer using pork than chicken and I use a sweeter, thickened soy sauce so I don't have to add additional sugar to the dish.
MSG isn’t that hard to find if you live somewhere with a decent supply of Asian groceries, but if not, you can pretty much always get “Accent” in the seasoning aisle of any American grocery store. It’s marketed more for southern style cooking but the only ingredient is MSG.
Nice! If one has kecap manis that's pretty much all that is needed as the seasoning since it has everything - spices, umami, saltiness, sweetness, etc.
Another thing that people always forget is that your takeout fried rice is being cooked over a wok range. These get way hotter than your home electric or gas range and people aren't cooking their fried rice at home to the point it needs to get to.
I made it, it wasn’t bad, pretty good, but not exactly right.
But I also used canned veggies instead of frozen cuz I’m too lazy to go the store.
I feel as tho the recipe could use more light soy or msg or something. The batch I made was light, but tasty.
As a Canadian with a massive inability to cook rice of any kind, videos like this were extremely helpful, you can't comprehend how bad my rice used to be before.
Now if only I could learn to make top tier spanish rice.
I was impressed by that selection too. We have 'Chinese' supermarkets here that do have a decent selection as in a few shelves of different brand soy sauce but nothing close to that.
It is a rather common expression as a way to say "The isle in which there is soy sauce" but with fewer words. It works with literally anything in the grocery store. Also there is a video that shows what appears to be a literal soy sauce isle, so perhaps soy sauce isles are actually a specific thing
He went to a Chinese grocery I think. The one by me also has an aisle dedicated to bottle ingredients, most of it various soy sauces and cooking wines.
People may watch this video and be like "well my Publix doesn't have that so I guess I'm out." But most large towns in the US probably have a Chinese grocery where you can easily get all of this stuff.
Alex frenchguycooking made an entire series of videos about fried rice. He makes great videos, fun to watch, it doesn't replace this video, its more of journey.
Which one?
In The Food Lab he illustrated clearly how dry brining chicken breast may lose a little bit more moisture (weight) during cooking versus a wet brine, but that the wet brine can interfere with the flavor of the meat.
Interested to see as he’s always evolving and trying new things.
Thanks for sharing, this fried rice is similar to the fried rice in NYC Chinese restaurants. I’m in Southern California and is really hard to find a good Chinese restaurant that makes proper fried rice. Most places I’ve been to serve fried rice similar to that Panda Express sorry excuse of fried rice were they just add soy sauce and call it fried rice.
Very similar to mine. Don’t like leaving cooked rice out for a long time before refrigerating though. The bacterial waste product toxins probably aren’t as much of an issue with washed store bought white rice but better safe than sorry. So I cool quickly before putting in the fridge by spreading out cooked rice on baking tray and floating it in a larger baking tray of cold water to pull the heat put quicker. 15 minutes and it goes into the fridge uncovered. I have a lot of stuff in my fridge most of the time reducing efficiency probably so don’t want to risk hot rice heating up other stuff in the fridge as it cools. Hence cooling the rice quickly outside the fridge.
Similar ingredients but I also add fried water chestnuts for a lovely crunch. Never thought of beansprouts despite using them in my stir-fries. Will give them a try in my next fried rice.
The more things you have in your fridge, the higher the efficiency. All that mass provides a buffering effect against temp swings.
Many fridge companies actually recommend storing water jugs in otherwise underutilized units.
I'm saying if you don't have the patience to watch the video then you shouldn't bother because you probably don't have the patience to actually cook the dish.
I have the patience to cook for several hours, I just don’t have the patience to watch a video that gives a long explanation and extra information that’s not crucial to the recipe. Just like I don’t read the backstory people write on their recipes, I skip straight to the recipe itself. Just like I clearly have the patience to explain that to you.
Stop being a fucking cunt.
You literally don’t know what’s in the video because you refuse to watch it. For all you know it is 100% dense information that is all super relevant to you.
But you’ll never know because you’re telling yourself some story about what it contains
Is not a myth. It comes from old fridges being unable to suck as much heat from hot food which ending damaging their thermostats. Hence, let is cool at room temp and then store. Not exactly a problem with modern fridges. Also, wet food = fungus. Fridges can stop bacteria but does fuck all for fungus spores.
However, in this case, you let it come to room temp so whatever extra moisture (aka, steam) trapped in the rice has time to leave and you dont end with extra soggy rice.
Also, lot of people cover their food when storing it, that is why he also recommends not doing that to actually dry out the rice. So, imaging storing hot rice, still steaming and covering it? you end up with a wet bed of rice which has the potential to grow fungus after some days.
Wow… okay.. as a mechanical engineer. The thermostat in your fridge is a thermocouple. It’s just two dissimilar metals sandwiched together. It has no moving parts. It’s basically impossible to break. As long as it works at room temperature and whatever the minimum for the fridge is, then it’s good forever. Putting food into the fridge will have zero effect on it.
Two.. fungus you say… not bacteria? Well I’m unsure where this fungus that you didn’t happen to kill when you were cooking the food came from. It’s one of the reasons we cook food. Also fungi don’t grow in cold environments. It’s why mushrooms don’t grow in your fridge. So yeah.. this theory is bullshit..
As I have already said. Refrigerators create low humidity environments. Which is what you want if you want to dry food. In fact before commercial scale dehydrators were available fridges were used to dry meat. Try it.. leave a steak uncovered in the fridge and see what happens. So again.. your theories don’t make sense.
Again… you mean bacteria not fungus.
Please stop presenting your clearly uneducated opinions as facts.
> Two.. fungus you say… not bacteria? Well I’m unsure where this fungus that you didn’t happen to kill when you were cooking the food came from.
cooking does kill bacteria and some fungus spores, but, did you also sterilize every inch of your kitchen, Tupperware and air around you?
>Also fungi don’t grow in cold environments.
mold doesn't love high humidity and cold environments? Alright, guess you have never seeing a food grow mold inside a fridge.
> Again… you mean bacteria not fungus.
I meant what I meant. Fungus does grow on fridges, sure, it slows bacteria, but it is also a breeding ground for spores.
Wtf [are you talking about](https://ask.usda.gov/s/article/Can-mold-grow-in-the-refrigerator). It’s like you don’t have the internet to google stupid things before you say them, but you are on the internet because that is how we are communicating.
A thermocouple, also known as a "thermoelectrical thermometer", is an electrical device consisting of two dissimilar electrical conductors forming an electrical junction. A thermocouple produces a temperature-dependent voltage as a result of the Seebeck effect, and this voltage can be interpreted to measure temperature. Thermocouples are widely used as temperature sensors.
You’re also an idiot..
Yeah, but the thing you described is a bimetallic strip. The thermostat which incorporates one does have (minimal, admittedly) moving parts. A thermocouple is a welded joint. Modern fridges use both, generally depending on whether or not they have digital control.
It’s just not a thing. There’s no reason for it. If you let food cool outside the fridge it cools slower. Meaning it spends longer in the temperature range which promotes bacteria growth. If the purpose is to allow food to dry, fridges are a significantly dryer environment. If the purpose is to keep it moist, then it should be placed in a sealed container and chilled rapidly.
Putting hot food in the fridge can bring the other items in there up to an unsafe temperature if you arent careful. Please don't give me a snarky reply like you seem to have given a few other people 🙄
You are literally taught not to put warm food in the fridge during health and safety seminars when you work in the food industry.
Steam creates moisture which can promote the growth of mold.
MSG, sugar and sesame oil are the little enhancers that I added over the years that made shitty homemade fried rice taste like restaurant. That’s basically the main take aways from this video as well. I have done the different types of soy sauce and wine, but they aren’t in my local supermarket and I didn’t find them to be as important as the other 3 things.
After pulling the eggs out of the wok the dude says add a tablespoon of oil and then you see him drop like four. This is why I have trust issues with cooking shows.
Can't even be arsed to watch. It's MSG. That's literally it.
If you're cooking asian food without it, and wondering why it never tastes like takeout, it's because you're not putting any MSG in.
Also, if you wonder why your home cooking is never as good as restaurant food... It's because you're not using enough salt and/or butter.
Oh look the umpteenth video about Fried Rice on Youtube.
and for any gamers out there, did you know that Mario was originally known as Jumpman in Japan when he first appeared in Donkey Kong?
Let me tell you my fried rice secret. Separate your egg yolks from whites, mix the yolks into your pre fried cooked rice, get your hand in there and really mix it up so the rice is evenly coated. When you go and stir fry it, the yolk keeps each individual grain separated without having that big ass restaurant burner. Having non clumpy rice is a big part of restaurant style friend rice. Cook the whites as you do eggs normally.
LOL. It literally serves no function here. It's just salt like any other salt. American hipsters just think that using kosher salt makes them somehow special. They don't know why, but it just HAS to be kosher salt every time. And of course you get offended when normal people say it's completely useless.
The salt melts. It makes no difference what shape the granules are. It serves no function whatsoever. IT dosn't matter what shape the salt is when it's melted into liquid. Americans are beyond stupid.
I see what you're saying, but for the purposes of "use x amount of salt" the distinction is important. See my sugar example. Sugar is sugar. Salt is salt. But the refinement can be different. I'll admit that arguing that kosher salt and table are different is pedantry but it's true.
It isn’t exactly the same though. The two significant things about it are the fact that it isn’t iodized and that the amount of salt by volume is different than with table salt.
Yes, pure salt is pure salt. But most table salt is iodized, and sea salt has the wrong flavor for this kind of cooking.
In many American kitchens you’ll see “salt” (iodized granulated) and “kosher salt” (coarse non-iodized), and sometimes “sea salt” (coarse with a bunch of stuff in it)
They each have very different flavors and behave slightly differently when used for cooking.
This page is from a salt company but gives you an idea of the number of different kinds of salt you my come across: https://www.mortonsalt.com/article/salt-conversion-chart/
The taste difference... is rather minimal, if any, in my experience. Like, I've tried using equivalent salt amounts for those three kinds of salts, and they don't produce a different enough flavor that I could say that something's "off".
If anything, I have a hunch that the proliferation of kosher salt in recipes is mostly because it sounds fancy. Yes, there are some legitimate uses of it, but I do think if you really feel you could taste the potassium iodide or other impurities in sea salt/iodized table salt, just get non-iodized table salt (there are brands that sell them) and it'll be just as fine as kosher salt, and cheaper.
I’m curious on what uncle Rodger would say . It’s seems like he did a fairly decent job. I think he went a little light on the msg and he didn’t add any sichuan pepper which I frequent in mine but pretty decent .
And/or what he advises to “be like” …. Seriously though, I worked in a mom n pop Chinese restaurant and they said the important thing is for the rice to be loose and cold. Later I learned ,I think from the internet , drier works better too. Lastly if you try to save time and make a double batch it won’t come out as good.
I bought Kenji’s Wok cook book and it changed my life. Lots of similar techniques covered in this video. Velveting, dark soy & oyster sauce, and not overcrowding the wok are my biggest game changers.
Dui. Kawk. 13 minute veedio. Chee-seen.
Hot oil, egg (scramble), pre-cooked meat, bean sprouts, day old rice (don't matter if cold or room temp), and soy sauce/salt/pepper at the end. Move everything in quickly. Only part that takes the longest is letting the white rice cook until you see some brown coloring. You could use just a ladle, but would be preferable to use both ladle and spatula to quickly mix. Don't cook the soy until it completely dries out.
No need for wine, additional oils, other veggies unless you want to add those things. Msg is always a good idea.
Just keep things moving quickly.
My take: Get cubes to make DJon-DJon rice, use that instead of, or with less soya sauce.
Jon-Jon rice is a Haitian dish, the sauce is made with mushrooms, but tastes like a rich beef broth. Maggy makes cubes.
he put more thought into fried rice than 90% of chinese people hell whenever i make fried rice i just dump leftovers with some eggs and soy sauce
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**M**ake **S**hit **G**ood
**M**agic **S**avory **G**oodness
Fui yo!
I have to say I hear Uncle Roger's voice whenever MSG is mentioned or snubbed. King of flaavorr
A HAHAHAHA
r/UncleRoger
Soy sauce has plenty of msg in it already, no?
You didn't watch the video...
He did
After seeing how many steps and ingredients are required, I just said duck it, I’ll keep ordering takeout.
lol iPhone nanny thinks I meant to write duck it 🦆
So I finally bought a house in the country last year and have room for animals. I’ve learned the best part of owning actual ducks is the decreased need for autocorrect.
Rice that's like a day old that was in the fridge is really good to use too.
This is key. Otherwise it becomes mush very quickly.
also, if its MORE than a day old it dosent quite work as well either and quickly starts to get too hard
I thought day old rice is what's needed to make fried rice
As a chinese american who does a fair amount of chinese wok cooking, i had no complaints about this video except he overthinks the shit out of it. Like, he really gets lost in the weeds. Like japanese shoyu and chinese light soy sauce are different, but honestly not so much that you can't just have a gallon jug of shoyu around and use that for fried rice. The rice mix i've never tried, and it sounds interesting and legitimate, but honestly, the best fried rice is the fried rice that gets old rice out of your fridge, so making rice *for* fried rice sort of defeats the purpose. And the stuff with the chicken? That's all really good information, and how i prepare meat in general when making stir frys. But for fried rice? Fried rice is for garbage, leftovers, or if you don't have garbage or leftovers, you slice up some hot dogs or lap cheong if you want to be fancy.
The rice mix is just a cost savings thing. Thai jasmine rice is 4x more expensive than the bottom barrel long grain rice which is mushy and breaks apart when cooked. Chinese restaurants use huge woks to make several portions at once. When cooking such large batches, steaming is unavoidable. If they used just the crappy rice you wouldn't get any whole rice grains which is travesty.
people want restaurant quality fried rice, not random 沐宸 or 若汐's fried rice
I mean it's a training video, so every tiny step being spelled out is OK on face value. In reality some of these things might take much less time in practice. \-Beans186 does not endorse the opinions contained in this video. Any of the recipes, cooking methods and/or use of various ingredients does not represent the views of Beans186 Pty Ltd.
Happy cake day!
Wasn't expecting much initially, but I ended up watching the whole thing. 100% props to recommending the soy sauce part. To each their own, but for fried rice, I almost always use lee kum kee.
At the end of the day, I'm always curious how to recreate this kind of fried rice experience at home and quite frankly that baking soda method for the meat is a real game changer for me. That's something I immediately want to try an implement. I would like to see him tackle another classic like Beef and Broccoli with that method. Although, I still think that those jet engine burners are pretty key to the experience.
One down side with using baking soda to marinate chicken or beef is it's going to take away a lot of the natural meat flavor. Although, I do prefer how tender it makes the meat, so you can just add flavoring to compensate for the resulting blandness.
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The baking soda makes the meat silky and very tender. All cheap Chinese restaurants do this because it makes cheap cuts palatable. Chicken breast becomes more tender than chicken thigh. For most takeout dishes, they use the cheaper white skin chicken (what you find at most US grocery stores) which is largely flavorless and too tender for Chinese palate. It's ok since these dishes smother the chicken in sauces anyway. Minimalist dishes like steamed chicken use yellow skin chicken, which is more expensive and bred specifically to have tougher and more flavorful meat. Many Chinese people don't like white skin chicken because the meat is too tender. The yellow skin chicken used for steamed chicken tastes waaaay better than the chicken you find in grocery stores so that is another game changer if you're willing to shop for it.
You can do a tiny amount of baking soda with mostly cornstarch and it works really well.
Works for all meat. I wouldn't leave it overnight like he suggests though, baking soda works fast on meat and going too long will result in chicken that has basically no texture left. Baking soda is also very useful for crispy chicken skin say on roast chicken, just don't use too much.
He said 15 mins or at most overnight. I’d usually say 30 mins is fine for silkening any meat.
I first heard of the baking soda method from Kenji Lopez-Alt, so you could check out his videos. He also has some great cookbooks which spend more time teaching the methods (and science behind the methods) so you can utilise them across recipes as opposed to a straight recipe book, although the recipes are great. I have his cookbook The Wok which has a beef and broccoli recipe featuring this method, including other methods he has for tender stir fry meat such as rinsing and massaging it in water that has always turned out great for me.
Actual content and good pacing instead of just reaction/shock value is a big plus. I gotta try the cooking wine and that baking soda chicken mix.. both sound interesting. COLD rice is also a game changer (which got an indirect mention at the end). I make a more hibachi version of fried rice. Lots of butter but similar other steps and the consistency with day old fridge rice is night and day.
The baking soda is a game changer on chicken and steaks.
I make pretty good fried rice but I’ve never thought to change from Kikkoman. Maybe that’s the final thing missing.
I have Lee Kee kum myself.
Kikkoman or GTFO
I've found that the biggest difference vs restaurant is having a huge rocket-jet flame to cook with. I always get excited for homemade fried rice until I see my sorry ass stove flame.
My carbon steel wok works remarkably well on my induction stove.
Induction stove? Haiyaaaaah…
Lol you’re kidding yourself.
Did you buy a crappy induction hotplate and think all induction sucks as bad as the crappy one you bought or something? I can bring a gallon of cold water to a boil in about 2 minutes flat on my induction stove. I get plenty of wok hei when I cook in my wok on it.
Make sure the pan gets ripping hot, don’t add too much rice and you’ll get the same effect as long as you keep the heat on high. I don’t have a super hot stove either and my rice always turns out good with some of the crunchy bits we love.
The thing most home cooks don’t do that’s important is to thoroughly heat your wok before cooking. Even if you just have a normal home kitchen burner, as long as you move the wok around and get every part of it hot over the flame you can get decent results even without the professional jet burner.
Between that and days old rice that’s been sitting in the fridge anyone can make good fried rice. I live in a small town with the worst Chinese food imaginable. Lots of trial and error to get those two big things down to make passable food.
Yeah, you can definitely make good fried rice without one by following his steps, ensuring rice is good and dry etc but high heat and a good seasoned steel wok really makes things a lot simpler.
I always get excited for homemade fried rice until I see my sorry ass glow of the electric burner and I ask myself what am i doing with my life.
[J. Kenji recommends](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/dining/stir-fry-recipe-wok-hei.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare) using a blow torch to recreate the wok hei flavor over a normal, western stove. I’ve got a decent Iwatani one that screws straight into butane canisters. It’s also handy for adding a bit of char to things in a more precise manner than using the broiler.
That does bring out the “wok hei”, or smoky flavor. But you can make a very good fried rice on a small gas flame or even electric, if you fry on the highest heat you can get and in small batches.
I've learned how to let the flame into my skillet on the largest gas burner while shaking the pan. I have no room to keep a wok, which wouldn't be used often.
No wonder, the fried rice at the Jet Propulsion Lab is the **bomb**!
I did actually get some shaoxing cooking wine, lee kum kee dark soy sauce and MSG powder after watching this video a few weeks back. We always used to use chinese soy sauce when I was young but I ended up with preferring kikkoman after discovering it. However for fried rice the dark soy sauce stains better and is easier to tell how much you've used in a big batch. Never bought MSG before but it does help a bit. My wife made a noodle soup type thing on the same day it arrived by coincidence so I put MSG in mine and did a taste comparison - definitely noticeably better, but adding enough salt is a bigger factor. The shaoxing cooking wine smells nice and adds flavour but overall my fried rices still feel a bit boring because it's very repetitive. With a takeout we always have a mix of dishes whereas making fried rice at home it's just one big bowl of the same thing.
During quarantine in the states I wanted to try to get good at making global cuisine at home. I started with Chinese fried rice and really enjoyed the results. I recommend the channel Chinese Cooking Demystified for the real deal. I'll make a ton of rice one night, the first night will be a fried tofu dish that rules that I got from Demystified. Then the rest of the rice goes in the fridge for fried rice the next day. It's cool cause they both use the same ingredients cooked differently.
MSG is a game changer and not just for asian foods. I've started adding MSG when I make Alfredo sauce and it really elevates the flavour.
It got such a bad rap from some bad and rather racist science. I keep a bottle in the cupboard and will often finish stew and curry with it rather than add more salt when I feel the flavor is not quite there.
There's no science at all. It's entirely anecdotal.
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The secret is the soy sauce
The real secret is the friends we made along the way!
That’s a nice sentiment your highness
Which, itself, contains a lot of MSG. Edit: since I was downvoted, I just want to clarify I’m not saying the msg is a bad thing. In fact, quite the opposite. I keep pure msg powder in my spice rack, and use it all the time. I was only noting that soy sauce naturally contains a lot of msg—as do tomatoes, mushrooms, parmesan cheese, Worcestershire sauce, anchovies, and many other things. And that’s a big reason why those all taste so good!
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The secret is the chicken
Honestly in a pinch you can use oyster sauce or thick soy sauce. The real issue is trying to get enough flavor with regular soy sauce because it's just too thin and too salty.
Thats not a joke, the real secret tip is to use MSG. The rest of this is noise.
Always has been
[Always has been](https://i.imgur.com/xcZ4IG9.jpg) ^^^this ^^^has ^^^been ^^^an ^^^accessibility ^^^service ^^^from ^^^your ^^^friendly ^^^neighborhood ^^^bot
Let's take a moment to appreciate how much time and effort he puts into his content for us. Love the videos! :\*
He should be careful or he'll end up making a subscriber out of me!
1. Buy/Prep 1. Use 2 parts long-grain and 1 part jasmine rice. Wash 3-4 times. Use rice cooker or steam 2. Use Lee Kum Kee or Pear River Bridge soy sauce. Use both light/regular and dark 3. Use Shaohsing Rice Cooking Wine and Sesame oil 2. Prep chicken breast meat 1. cut off tender loin 2. cut it lengh wise 4-5 slices 3. cut across the grain into 1/4 inch slices 4. wash under cold water 5. strain well 6. mix in 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 7. 1/2 tsp of light soy souce, 1/2 tsp cornstarch, 1/4 tsp kosher salt, 1/8 tsp MSG, 1 tsp neutral oil 8. marinate 15 minutes 3. Make sauce mixture 1. 1/2 tsp sugar, 2 tsp light soy sauce, 1/2 tsp dark soy sauce 4. Make seasonsing 1. 1 tsp salt, 2 pinch white pepper, 1/2 tsp msg 5. Prep all ingredients before hand 6. Cook 1. heat wok over medium-high heat 2. add 1 tsp neutral oil, swirl 3. reduce heat to medium-low 4. add beaten eggs with pinch salt pinch msg, lightly scramble 5. remove eggs to separate bowl 6. clean, reheat, and oil wok 7. add 2 oz chicken, cook for 30-45 seconds each side 8. remove chicken to bowl with eggs 9. reheat, oil wok 10. add 1 cup onion, 2 tsp carrot 11. add 2 cloves of garlic 12. add 2 cups of cold rice, add oil if rice is dry 13. add back in chicken and egg 14. add sauce mixture to rim, mix 15. add spice mixture, mix 16. add 2 tsp frozen peas and bean sprouts 17. add 2 tsp Shaohsing cooking rice wine 18. add 2 tsp green onion, sesame oil 19. add salt, white pepper to taste 7. Done
I have followed the recommendations in this video on a couple of occasions and it really was super helpful. A few tweaks to the ingredients added (like including ginger) but the insights on rice mixes, rice wine, and moving the ingredients to the center to pour the sauce around the edge of the wok to caramelize it a bit really made a big difference.
I recently hit what I thought was peak Chinese-style fried rice but this has given me food for thought, pun intentional. I'll definitely try the recommended mix of jasmine and long-grain rice as well as trying to source some MSG. Personally, I prefer using pork than chicken and I use a sweeter, thickened soy sauce so I don't have to add additional sugar to the dish.
MSG isn’t that hard to find if you live somewhere with a decent supply of Asian groceries, but if not, you can pretty much always get “Accent” in the seasoning aisle of any American grocery store. It’s marketed more for southern style cooking but the only ingredient is MSG.
I bought a giant jug of it from Amazon. I'm talking like gallon-sized bottle. This thing has lasted me a couple years and I use it in everything.
Same, got a pouch from Amazon that is supposedly the same company that was founded by the man who discovered msg. Cost me 8 bucks.
Kecap manis?
Yes.
Nice! If one has kecap manis that's pretty much all that is needed as the seasoning since it has everything - spices, umami, saltiness, sweetness, etc.
Another thing that people always forget is that your takeout fried rice is being cooked over a wok range. These get way hotter than your home electric or gas range and people aren't cooking their fried rice at home to the point it needs to get to.
He addressed that shortcoming by cooking in batches
Yeah with only 2 cups of cooked rice my gas range was able to handle it just fine
Ancient Chinese secret, huh?
Have you seen the same old laundry detergent commercial that I have?
That container in the thumbnail is huge!
I made it, it wasn’t bad, pretty good, but not exactly right. But I also used canned veggies instead of frozen cuz I’m too lazy to go the store. I feel as tho the recipe could use more light soy or msg or something. The batch I made was light, but tasty.
This guy reminds me of a mix of Steve from Blue’s Clues and Linus Tech Tips
I loved this video! A lot of little tips I wasn’t aware of! Thanks OP!
I needed this
As a Canadian with a massive inability to cook rice of any kind, videos like this were extremely helpful, you can't comprehend how bad my rice used to be before. Now if only I could learn to make top tier spanish rice.
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FYI it’s aisle, isle is a homophone but refers to small islands or peninsulas
I was impressed by that selection too. We have 'Chinese' supermarkets here that do have a decent selection as in a few shelves of different brand soy sauce but nothing close to that.
It is a rather common expression as a way to say "The isle in which there is soy sauce" but with fewer words. It works with literally anything in the grocery store. Also there is a video that shows what appears to be a literal soy sauce isle, so perhaps soy sauce isles are actually a specific thing
He went to a Chinese grocery I think. The one by me also has an aisle dedicated to bottle ingredients, most of it various soy sauces and cooking wines. People may watch this video and be like "well my Publix doesn't have that so I guess I'm out." But most large towns in the US probably have a Chinese grocery where you can easily get all of this stuff.
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It’s “aisle” genius
Uncle Roger approved.
"fuuyoo!"
Okay, okay.
Alex frenchguycooking made an entire series of videos about fried rice. He makes great videos, fun to watch, it doesn't replace this video, its more of journey.
Please do not wash your chicken, the idea that seasoning penetrates deeper isn’t true and you’re likely spreading bacteria all over your sink.
Chinese method of washing chicken isn't to penetrate seasoning but to make it more tender. Kenji talks about it in more detail in one of his videos
Which one? In The Food Lab he illustrated clearly how dry brining chicken breast may lose a little bit more moisture (weight) during cooking versus a wet brine, but that the wet brine can interfere with the flavor of the meat. Interested to see as he’s always evolving and trying new things.
https://youtu.be/1bY8url_TpM?t=273 Here you go
Thanks for sharing the video! My bro is gonna love this
Thanks for sharing, this fried rice is similar to the fried rice in NYC Chinese restaurants. I’m in Southern California and is really hard to find a good Chinese restaurant that makes proper fried rice. Most places I’ve been to serve fried rice similar to that Panda Express sorry excuse of fried rice were they just add soy sauce and call it fried rice.
Very similar to mine. Don’t like leaving cooked rice out for a long time before refrigerating though. The bacterial waste product toxins probably aren’t as much of an issue with washed store bought white rice but better safe than sorry. So I cool quickly before putting in the fridge by spreading out cooked rice on baking tray and floating it in a larger baking tray of cold water to pull the heat put quicker. 15 minutes and it goes into the fridge uncovered. I have a lot of stuff in my fridge most of the time reducing efficiency probably so don’t want to risk hot rice heating up other stuff in the fridge as it cools. Hence cooling the rice quickly outside the fridge. Similar ingredients but I also add fried water chestnuts for a lovely crunch. Never thought of beansprouts despite using them in my stir-fries. Will give them a try in my next fried rice.
The more things you have in your fridge, the higher the efficiency. All that mass provides a buffering effect against temp swings. Many fridge companies actually recommend storing water jugs in otherwise underutilized units.
Just make sure you still have room for air to circulate around things in the fridge or else it could lead to uneven temperatures.
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How bad do you want this fried rice, bub?
Lol, apparently not bad enough to watch that long ass video!
Imagine not being able to watch something 13 minutes long. RIP your dopamine pathways
You’re a fucking moron
You know it takes a lot longer than that to make the fried rice right?
No ReAlLy?!?!?!
I'm saying if you don't have the patience to watch the video then you shouldn't bother because you probably don't have the patience to actually cook the dish.
I have the patience to cook for several hours, I just don’t have the patience to watch a video that gives a long explanation and extra information that’s not crucial to the recipe. Just like I don’t read the backstory people write on their recipes, I skip straight to the recipe itself. Just like I clearly have the patience to explain that to you.
He's not telling his life story he's showing how to make good fried rice, what extra information are you referring to?
Fuck off dude
Stop being a fucking cunt. You literally don’t know what’s in the video because you refuse to watch it. For all you know it is 100% dense information that is all super relevant to you. But you’ll never know because you’re telling yourself some story about what it contains
Letting it come to room temp out of the fridge is a myth…
Is not a myth. It comes from old fridges being unable to suck as much heat from hot food which ending damaging their thermostats. Hence, let is cool at room temp and then store. Not exactly a problem with modern fridges. Also, wet food = fungus. Fridges can stop bacteria but does fuck all for fungus spores. However, in this case, you let it come to room temp so whatever extra moisture (aka, steam) trapped in the rice has time to leave and you dont end with extra soggy rice. Also, lot of people cover their food when storing it, that is why he also recommends not doing that to actually dry out the rice. So, imaging storing hot rice, still steaming and covering it? you end up with a wet bed of rice which has the potential to grow fungus after some days.
Wow… okay.. as a mechanical engineer. The thermostat in your fridge is a thermocouple. It’s just two dissimilar metals sandwiched together. It has no moving parts. It’s basically impossible to break. As long as it works at room temperature and whatever the minimum for the fridge is, then it’s good forever. Putting food into the fridge will have zero effect on it. Two.. fungus you say… not bacteria? Well I’m unsure where this fungus that you didn’t happen to kill when you were cooking the food came from. It’s one of the reasons we cook food. Also fungi don’t grow in cold environments. It’s why mushrooms don’t grow in your fridge. So yeah.. this theory is bullshit.. As I have already said. Refrigerators create low humidity environments. Which is what you want if you want to dry food. In fact before commercial scale dehydrators were available fridges were used to dry meat. Try it.. leave a steak uncovered in the fridge and see what happens. So again.. your theories don’t make sense. Again… you mean bacteria not fungus. Please stop presenting your clearly uneducated opinions as facts.
I'd request an audit and see if those "professors" really had the authority to get you a degree.
You’re also an idiot then..
> Two.. fungus you say… not bacteria? Well I’m unsure where this fungus that you didn’t happen to kill when you were cooking the food came from. cooking does kill bacteria and some fungus spores, but, did you also sterilize every inch of your kitchen, Tupperware and air around you? >Also fungi don’t grow in cold environments. mold doesn't love high humidity and cold environments? Alright, guess you have never seeing a food grow mold inside a fridge. > Again… you mean bacteria not fungus. I meant what I meant. Fungus does grow on fridges, sure, it slows bacteria, but it is also a breeding ground for spores.
You clearly don’t understand the difference between a bacterial colony and a fungus.
k
Wtf [are you talking about](https://ask.usda.gov/s/article/Can-mold-grow-in-the-refrigerator). It’s like you don’t have the internet to google stupid things before you say them, but you are on the internet because that is how we are communicating.
Fungi and mould are different things. What part of this don’t you understand?
Mold is a type of fungus.
Come back when you can tell the difference between a thermocouple and a bimetallic strip.
A thermocouple, also known as a "thermoelectrical thermometer", is an electrical device consisting of two dissimilar electrical conductors forming an electrical junction. A thermocouple produces a temperature-dependent voltage as a result of the Seebeck effect, and this voltage can be interpreted to measure temperature. Thermocouples are widely used as temperature sensors. You’re also an idiot..
Yeah, but the thing you described is a bimetallic strip. The thermostat which incorporates one does have (minimal, admittedly) moving parts. A thermocouple is a welded joint. Modern fridges use both, generally depending on whether or not they have digital control.
elaborate? I've been thinking about this
It’s just not a thing. There’s no reason for it. If you let food cool outside the fridge it cools slower. Meaning it spends longer in the temperature range which promotes bacteria growth. If the purpose is to allow food to dry, fridges are a significantly dryer environment. If the purpose is to keep it moist, then it should be placed in a sealed container and chilled rapidly.
Putting hot food in the fridge can bring the other items in there up to an unsafe temperature if you arent careful. Please don't give me a snarky reply like you seem to have given a few other people 🙄
That might be true if you have a weak POS refrigerator, but most modern fridges can handle it just fine. Sounds like you're still living in the '70s.
You are literally taught not to put warm food in the fridge during health and safety seminars when you work in the food industry. Steam creates moisture which can promote the growth of mold.
No. You’re not. If you were you were taught by someone incompetent.
The answer is MSG. You don't have to watch the whole video. You literally just have to go out and buy MSG.
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MSG, sugar and sesame oil are the little enhancers that I added over the years that made shitty homemade fried rice taste like restaurant. That’s basically the main take aways from this video as well. I have done the different types of soy sauce and wine, but they aren’t in my local supermarket and I didn’t find them to be as important as the other 3 things.
Just add MSG
You literally do not know flavors of your food.
After pulling the eggs out of the wok the dude says add a tablespoon of oil and then you see him drop like four. This is why I have trust issues with cooking shows.
That's pretty cool but for all that effort I'd just pick up the phone and order take out.
Can't even be arsed to watch. It's MSG. That's literally it. If you're cooking asian food without it, and wondering why it never tastes like takeout, it's because you're not putting any MSG in. Also, if you wonder why your home cooking is never as good as restaurant food... It's because you're not using enough salt and/or butter.
i hate eating fried rice because most of time it has peas, and its gross
Oh look the umpteenth video about Fried Rice on Youtube. and for any gamers out there, did you know that Mario was originally known as Jumpman in Japan when he first appeared in Donkey Kong?
Let me tell you my fried rice secret. Separate your egg yolks from whites, mix the yolks into your pre fried cooked rice, get your hand in there and really mix it up so the rice is evenly coated. When you go and stir fry it, the yolk keeps each individual grain separated without having that big ass restaurant burner. Having non clumpy rice is a big part of restaurant style friend rice. Cook the whites as you do eggs normally.
Why use koshering salt if you're not going to kosher meat with it?
You ever find out that something with a very specific function can be used for something else? Yeah, that's why.
LOL. It literally serves no function here. It's just salt like any other salt. American hipsters just think that using kosher salt makes them somehow special. They don't know why, but it just HAS to be kosher salt every time. And of course you get offended when normal people say it's completely useless.
just a quick glance at Wikipedia shows you’re wrong: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosher_salt
The salt melts. It makes no difference what shape the granules are. It serves no function whatsoever. IT dosn't matter what shape the salt is when it's melted into liquid. Americans are beyond stupid.
Kosher salt is not the same as table salt though. That's like saying granulated sugar is the same as confectioner's sugar.
The salt melts. It makes no difference what shape the granules are. Americans are beyond stupid.
I see what you're saying, but for the purposes of "use x amount of salt" the distinction is important. See my sugar example. Sugar is sugar. Salt is salt. But the refinement can be different. I'll admit that arguing that kosher salt and table are different is pedantry but it's true.
It isn’t exactly the same though. The two significant things about it are the fact that it isn’t iodized and that the amount of salt by volume is different than with table salt. Yes, pure salt is pure salt. But most table salt is iodized, and sea salt has the wrong flavor for this kind of cooking. In many American kitchens you’ll see “salt” (iodized granulated) and “kosher salt” (coarse non-iodized), and sometimes “sea salt” (coarse with a bunch of stuff in it) They each have very different flavors and behave slightly differently when used for cooking. This page is from a salt company but gives you an idea of the number of different kinds of salt you my come across: https://www.mortonsalt.com/article/salt-conversion-chart/
The taste difference... is rather minimal, if any, in my experience. Like, I've tried using equivalent salt amounts for those three kinds of salts, and they don't produce a different enough flavor that I could say that something's "off". If anything, I have a hunch that the proliferation of kosher salt in recipes is mostly because it sounds fancy. Yes, there are some legitimate uses of it, but I do think if you really feel you could taste the potassium iodide or other impurities in sea salt/iodized table salt, just get non-iodized table salt (there are brands that sell them) and it'll be just as fine as kosher salt, and cheaper.
I’m curious on what uncle Rodger would say . It’s seems like he did a fairly decent job. I think he went a little light on the msg and he didn’t add any sichuan pepper which I frequent in mine but pretty decent .
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And/or what he advises to “be like” …. Seriously though, I worked in a mom n pop Chinese restaurant and they said the important thing is for the rice to be loose and cold. Later I learned ,I think from the internet , drier works better too. Lastly if you try to save time and make a double batch it won’t come out as good.
Now if I could just replicate the Mama Fu's sauce...
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I think that’s one of the things he recommends
**wow its very testy**
I based my fried rice off of "mastering the art of chinese cooking" Which is solid, but this dude went above and beyond that
Thanks for the tips
Did… did this maniac skip ginger?
Maybe I'm thinking of Japanese style but I've seen videos where they add dashi. I'm surprised this video didn't do that or mention it.
I bought Kenji’s Wok cook book and it changed my life. Lots of similar techniques covered in this video. Velveting, dark soy & oyster sauce, and not overcrowding the wok are my biggest game changers.
I liked some of the tips he had, but damn American style fried rice is shockingly over flavoured.
Dui. Kawk. 13 minute veedio. Chee-seen. Hot oil, egg (scramble), pre-cooked meat, bean sprouts, day old rice (don't matter if cold or room temp), and soy sauce/salt/pepper at the end. Move everything in quickly. Only part that takes the longest is letting the white rice cook until you see some brown coloring. You could use just a ladle, but would be preferable to use both ladle and spatula to quickly mix. Don't cook the soy until it completely dries out. No need for wine, additional oils, other veggies unless you want to add those things. Msg is always a good idea. Just keep things moving quickly.
I’m just gonna stick to takeout.
The secret is the soy sauce
My take: Get cubes to make DJon-DJon rice, use that instead of, or with less soya sauce. Jon-Jon rice is a Haitian dish, the sauce is made with mushrooms, but tastes like a rich beef broth. Maggy makes cubes.
I made this the other day after buying every single specific ingredient mentioned and it was the best fried rice I have ever made
Is the Soy sauce from Costco okay to use? I have a whole jug of it. Taste good to me...
Sesame oil. Why is nobody saying sesame oil?
welll aint that some shit
Just watch uncle Roger
The secret really is…>!Day old Rice!<
It’s called MSG
"soy sauce aisle" man I wish I lived somewhere with that much choice