Austin Fried Rice

Inspired by The Peached Tortilla - Austin, TX

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Fried rice is a huge guilty pleasure of mine. And yet, I used to rarely make it at home until I learned a very simple truth. Fried rice is a leftovers dish in the same way that any hash is. Instead of throwing out old rice, simply fry it up with whatever you have on hand and there you go. However, sometimes you still want to dress it up a bit and make it both unique and something amazing all on it’s own. This is one such example.

Parts of this recipe were adapted by Eric Silverstein’s recipe for “#60 Fried Rice” over at the amazing Austin food truck turned restaurant, The Peached Tortilla. In his cookbook, Eric is quick to mention how much freedom you have in this as long as you follow some basic principles. Let’s give it a go.

INGREDIENTS

AUSTIN FRIED RICE (Serves 8 as a hearty side):

  • 4 TBS canola oil

  • 3 garlic cloves, minced

  • ½ in ginger knob, grated (preferably on microplane to create over 1 TBS)

  • 2 cups shiitake mushrooms, nicely chopped (or your favorite available mushroom)

  • 1 cup green onions, chopped

  • 3 eggs, beaten

  • 1 tsp white pepper

  • 5 cups cold, cooked white rice (at least 2 days old)

  • 2 TBS butter

  • 2 tsp white miso (optional but recommended)

  • 4 TBS oyster sauce

ADDITIONAL NEEDS:

  • Peach pickled red onions (or sliced raw red onions)

  • Rice puffs (optional)

  • Cilantro, chopped

PEACH PICKLED RED ONIONS:

  • 1 bag peach tea (optional)

  • ½ cup rice wine vinegar

  • 2 TBS sugar

  • ½ TBS salt

  • 2 star anise pods

  • 2 cloves of garlic, peeled

  • 2 bay leaves

  • ½ serrano chili (seeded if desired)

  • 1 red onion, sliced or julienned

GO FOR IT

AUSTIN FRIED RICE:

  1. In a wok or large skillet/pan, heat oil over low heat

  2. Once heated, add minced garlic and grated garlic and stir for 1 or 2 minutes (until fragrant)

  3. Add chopped mushrooms and green onions and stir over low heat until they begin to soften (about 3 minutes), then remove all ingredients from pan (leaving behind as much oil as possible) and set aside

  4. In same wok or large skillet/pan, add additional 1 TBS of oil and heat while increasing heat to low-medium

  5. Add beaten eggs and scramble, then season with ½ tsp white pepper (be careful with heat, you don’t want to burn your eggs)

  6. Once eggs are scrambled, add in reserved onion/mushroom/garlic/ginger mix and then add in rice before increasing heat to high

  7. Add in butter (if using), white miso, oyster sauce, and ½ tsp white pepper and stir fry to incorporate all ingredients well, then remove from heat

  8. Before serving, top rice with rice puffs (if using), pickled onions, and chopped cilantro

RICE PUFFS:

  1. Take a few sheets of rice paper (I used the round sheets used to make Vietnamese spring rolls) and fry them in oil at 350°F until they puff and crisp

  2. Remove from oil and crumble to make rice puffs

PEACH PICKLED RED ONIONS:

  1. Boil 1 cup of water, the remove from heat and steep tea bag for 10 minutes

  2. Once steeped, remove tea bag and add rice wine vinegar, sugar, and salt and stir well

  3. Once sugar and salt dissolves (about 5 minutes), add sliced onion to a mason jar with star anise, garlic, bay leaves, and serrano chili and then pour over with liquid to cover

  4. Seal jar and allow to pickle for at least 24 hours before using

NOTES:

Good fried rice is completely dependent on OLD RICE. Have you ever left rice in a container in the refrigerator and come back to it a couple days later to find it a bit dried out? That’s what you’re going for. With this is mind, if you are not using leftover rice then you need to make rice and then let it sit for a bit. The more surface area you give it, the quicker this process will go. So either, you can leave a bowl of fresh rice in the refrigerator until it dries out after a few days or, you can spread it out on a baking pan and let it sit out on the counter for a day or 2 to achieve this. You can do this with fresh rice and it will have the same flavor profile you’re going for but not the consistency usually associated with fried rice. I highly recommend you do this as best you can.

I call this Austin Fried Rice because it’s a creation of Eric Silverstein over at The Peached Tortilla out in Austin. Throwing cilantro, pickled onions, and rice puffs are not usually associated with fried rice so I’m going to count this as a pretty good fusion. That being said, I want to point out that I add more vegetables than he does because I did not add in the Lap Cheong (Chinese sausage) that he does. This is only because I made this alongside the Char Siu Roast Pork from the previous post and didn’t see the need to add in more protein. If you want to add some meat, then go for it. However, I like that this version makes it a vegetarian friendly dish.

Additionally, while I loved Eric’s addition of pickled onions and cilantro, I felt the whole rice puff thing was quite a bit of effort (both in shopping and cooking) for what I believed to be very little benefit. It adds a nice crunch to your bite and many people will find that as a great addition. But if you do not have rice paper on hand then I am going to go out on a limb and say that you can probably skip it. I hope Eric doesn’t hate me for this, though. I really loved this rice and hope yall do too.