45 – Chicken Fried Rice (From Jamie to James)

Why did nobody ever tell me it would be so easy?! Had I known that I could make bang-on chicken fried rice ,i.e., as good as any take-out around – and in such a short amount of time – I would have done it years ago!

Actually, somebody did tell me – but it was only a matter of days ago. Ironically, the person is named “Jamie”, hence my reversal of Jamie and James in the title. She runs a great food blog called “Whisked Away“, which I’ve been following for a little while now. Two days ago she shared this recipe on her site, and instantly I knew I had to try it.

With buddies over last night for one of our semi-annual Nintendo64 sessions, it wasn’t the greatest opportunity to cook up and serve rice. Instead, I made Mozzarella and Itailan Sausage Crostinis and Bruschetta, at least one of which I’ll post on here soon. The very next night though – that would be tonight – I made sure that making this dish would be my number one priority.

I made a few adjustments to the recipe out of necessity and otherwise: adding a second chicken breast (and subsequently, more oil); including additional rice (1 cup dried rice, which was clearly more than 2 cups when cooked); tossing in an extra 1/2 cup frozen veggies; and using sunflower oil in place of sesame oil, as we simply didn’t have any. Aside from that, AND using low-sodium soy sauce…AND cooking my rice only 2 hours before frying it up…AND using a Le Creuset braiser because we don’t own a wok…aside from those things, it was exactly as described over at Whisked Away.

I should point out that Jamie took the recipe from a blog titled “Iowa Girl Eats“, both to give credit where it’s rightfully due, and so that you can laugh as hard as I did at the supposed irony of taking cues on Chinese cuisine from a Caucasian girl living in one of America’s fly-over states. Because you can so easily find the recipe at either of their sites (by the way, I laugh, but Iowa Girl Eats looks like a great site), there’s no need for me to restate it here. Pictures though – that I can do…

I’m still working on getting a picture accepted by Foodgawker, so wish me luck with this one. I took a ton of different, very similar pictures, and only noticed afterwards that my focal points weren’t ideal and that I should have closed up the aperture a bit. Oh well, a few of the pictures seemed to turn out okay, as I hope you’ll agree.

Anyways, until next time – happy cooking!