Last-minute fried rice

Easy fried rice recipe

Fried rice is a great way to use up leftover rice (and if you have some in the fridge, we heartily recommend Curtis Stone’s fried rice with BBQ chicken and vegetables). But what if you don’t have any cold rice waiting to be to used up? Don’t worry! With this quick, simple fried rice recipe, you can have a satisfying bowl of flavour-packed rice and vegetables on the table in 15 minutes. Keep a few key ingredients in your freezer and pantry and this will be one of those reliable recipes you can turn to any time for a fast, easy dinner everyone will enjoy. This will be your go-to home-made “best fried rice”! It’s a fab fast take on a dish with a long history – records in China, for example, reach back thousands of years. There are many variations, but rice, vegetables and soy sauce are usually key ingredients in the classic fried rice Australians love.

How to make easy fried rice

One pan and a few easy-to-buy ingredients are all you need to whip up this quick fried rice – the perfect last-minute meal. The key to this speedy dish is microwavable jasmine rice, a great stand-by to have in the kitchen cupboard. For our easy fried rice, we’re not using the microwave, but cooking it in the same pan where all the other cooking happens (this is a great dish for cutting down on the washing up, too!). Jasmine rice is a fragrant white rice with a lovely fluffy texture that works well with curries and stews and other dishes such as this speedy sticky pork stir-fry.

Start things off by heating a wok or large frying pan. Lightly whisk two eggs while the pan heats up. Add a little peanut oil (you could also use canola oil, if you don’t have peanut oil) and swirl to coat the base, then add the egg. Swirl the pan again to spread the egg out and cook briefly until just set – about 30 seconds. Turn the egg out onto a clean surface, roll it into a log and slice it thinly, crossways. Set aside, covered.

Next, add the bacon rashers, or slices of ham, or leftover chopped pork or beef to the pan and cook for about three minutes. Stir while cooking so it browns or heats through evenly. Next, add some frozen vegetables and ginger paste and cook for three minutes. Open the rice packets and add the rice to the pan, and cook for about 3 minutes, or until heated through.

The final key ingredient is soy sauce. Add that to pan and toss the mixture to combine. Season to taste with salt or pepper, top with the sliced egg and sliced spring onion.

All up, that takes just 15 minutes, which makes this a great meal when you are short on time but keen on satisfaction.

Change things up with prawn, chicken and tofu

There are many delicious ways you can put your own twist on this recipe. Prawns are a common ingredient in traditional fried rice, and you could easily use fresh or defrosted deveined prawns here. Cook the egg, if using, then cook the prawns. Similarly, you could use strips of chicken breast fillet instead.

For a vegetarian version, fry some cubed tofu, or try this recipe for quick crumbed tofu with fried rice, which also uses microwavable jasmine rice.

For the vegetables, other frozen vegetable mixes will work too, and of course, you can use up any leftover vegetables in your fried rice as well.

Now get cooking

This quick and very adaptable recipe shows how easy it can be to make dinner with just a few ingredients from the fridge, freezer and pantry – and what a great base rice is for a filling dinner. Put a flavour spin on the same one-pan rice idea with Mexican-style beef fried rice; make a hearty dish that cooks away while you do other things with slow cooker ‘fried’ rice, which is packed with veggies, bacon and prawns; or let everyone have fun filling their own fried rice lettuce cups.

Oven-baked rice dishes also make easy, hearty meals. Try Spanish-style chicken and rice, a great one-pan dinner, or gluten-free spiced tomato rice with salmon.

And don’t forget dessert: try rice pudding with cherries and salted coconut crumble, or Persian-style slow cooker rice pudding.