Fried Rice: The Chinese Solution for Leftover Rice

 If you have a copious amount of leftover rice in your fridge that's just getting harder each day and you can't bring yourself to throw it away, but neither do you want to encourage the well-being of the local pigeon population, then fried rice is the solution to your problem.  Fried rice is an easy dish to make that renders dry old rice edible again.  It's also very flexible; you can throw in anything you want and customize it to your taste, allowing for room for a creativity and experimentation.
Here's a basic recipe I stick to:

• Cold, cooked rice
• 1 egg
• Oil
• Some type of vegetables (lettuce, spinach, choy sum, etc.)
• Pre-cooked meat (ham, beef, chicken, etc.)
• Green onions
• Salt
• Pepper
• Some type of sauce (sesame oil, soy sauce, fish oil)

You'll notice that I don't include amounts for the ingredients --it's because fried rice is meant to fit your tastes.  For instance, I don't like having a lot of meat in my fried rice, so I'll throw in a relatively small amount of meat compared to the veggies.

For this post, I made fried rice with what I happened to have on hand --lettuce, spinach, peas, ham, scallions, and fish oil.

Steps:
1. Dice meat, vegetables, and green onions into small pieces and place on the side.

2. In a greased frying pan, fry an egg with the stove on high heat.  While it is frying, use a spatula to scramble it.

3. Once the egg is cooked, turn down the stove to medium.  Add as much rice as you plan on eating to the pan.  Mix and stir with the egg.  Break apart any large clumps of rice.  **Note: If the rice is dry, drizzle water over it to add moisture.




4. Add vegetables.  Stir around for 1-2 minutes.




5. Add meat and green onions.  Stir some more.


6. Sprinkle salt and pepper in.  Taste to check saltiness. 

7. Drizzle in your choice of sauces and stir rice.  Rice should be light brown.  (If your rice is dark brown, it will taste very strongly of the sauces.  But if that's what you want, go ahead.)


8. Stir until until the dish is completely warm and the rice is soft.  Eat.


**Notes**
-Continuous stirring is important to keep things from burning.  If you notice things burn anyways, it means you didn't grease the pan enough.
-If while cooking you notice the rice getting dry again, just drizzle more water on it.
-Unless you really like salty foods, put very little salt  in or skip it altogether if you plan on using soy sauce.