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Vegetable fried rice is one of those things that sounds good but doesn’t always taste as good as it sounds when it’s made with too much grease. If the ingredients are less than fresh, that bowl of rice you’ve dreamed about can easily become something that you can scarcely even swallow. The good news is that you can make your own vegetable fried rice at home. Making great rice is actually a lot easier than you think. Once you taste your own rice, you probably won’t be going out and getting this dish any time soon.

It All Starts with the Right Ingredients.

When you make your own dish at home, you can tailor it to fit anything you want. There is a basic recipe provided here, but that doesn’t mean you have to follow it to the letter. In fact, this dish is versatile enough that you can add or remove certain vegetables at will. This allows you to create a dish that is customized to your individual tastes or to the ingredients that you already have at home. Check out the recipe below, but don’t be afraid to get creative.

Ingredients : 

• 3 ½ Tablespoons safflower or avocado oil
• 1 cup onion (white, chopped)
• ½ cup carrots (chopped)
• 3 chopped green onions
• 1 cup additional greens, if desired
• 2 cups additional vegetables (this can be anything you want)
• 2 eggs (scrambled, cooked separately)
• 2 cups brown rice (cooked separately)
• 1 tablespoon ginger (fresh, grated)
• Red pepper flakes (pinch)
• 2 garlic cloves (minced)
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• Salt, to taste
• Chili-garlic sauce, to taste (optional)

Method:

You need to cook the rice, eggs, and vegetables separately. Prepare the rice first, as detailed in the instructions directly below under the heading “preparing your rice.” Next, prepare your vegetables and eggs according to the headings “cooking the vegetables” and “making perfect eggs.” This will tell you everything you need to know in order to prepare your meal.

Preparing Your Rice

Even if you don’t have a lot of experience in the kitchen, this is one of the easiest dishes to make. Don’t believe all the hype about rice being hard to prepare. As long as you remember one simple rule, you won’t have any trouble making delicious rice. For every cup of rice you cook, add two cups of water. When you first put your pot of water on the stove to boil, add about one tablespoon of butter. It’s also a good idea to add a little salt to the water and rice mixture. These steps add flavor to your rice and help prevent it from boiling over. Allow the rice to boil but don’t overcook it. That’s all there is to it.

Cooking the Vegetables

This is where you will need to add some oil into a skillet. If you have one made from cast-iron, that’s great but if not, use whatever you have on hand. Add the oil to your skillet and get it good and hot. Make sure all of the vegetables you intend to use are finely chopped. Whatever you’re using, it needs to be chopped into small pieces in order for it to cook properly. Allow the vegetables to brown but don’t cook them until all you have is a mushy mess. When the vegetables are about halfway through cooking, go ahead and add the garlic and ginger. Be careful not to allow the garlic to burn.

Making Perfect Eggs

This is by far the easiest part of the entire dish, although there really isn’t any part of it that could realistically be considered difficult. All you need to do is cook the eggs in a skillet and scramble them. Just as you did with the rice, make sure you cook the eggs separately. You want them to be thoroughly cooked but you don’t need to overcook them. You’ll know they’re finished cooking when you can scramble them and the yolk in the middle is solid instead of liquid. You can then remove them from the heat and set them aside.

Bringing it All Together

At this point, the only thing that should still be cooking is the skillet full of vegetables. You’re ready to turn up the heat and combine both the rice and the eggs. Add everything into the skillet and mix it together. You want to keep the heat high, but only for a short time. Mix things together, keeping the ingredients in constant motion to avoid allowing anything to burn. Do this for just a minute or two, then immediately remove the skillet from the heat. Allow the food to rest for a couple of minutes and it’s ready to enjoy.

Variations in the Recipe

Remember, you are in charge of this recipe, so you don’t have to follow everything ounce for ounce. As a matter of fact, you can leave things out or substitute one item for another if you prefer. If you don’t have avocado oil, you can substitute canola oil or even vegetable oil. By the same token, you can leave out the sesame oil or the soy sauce, especially if you don’t really have a taste for either one of these ingredients. The same is true for both the vegetables and the greens. Add the things you like and leave out the rest. That’s one of the things that makes this recipe so good. It’s not written in stone so you can personalize it almost any way you wish. You can even use white rice instead of brown, provided that you realize this will cut down on the potential health benefits of this dish.

Healthy Food That’s Easy to Prepare

If you follow the base recipe fairly closely, you have a healthy dish that doesn’t take forever and a day to prepare. It’s also delicious, making it easier to get on board with the idea of eating healthier in the first place. If you do choose to substitute white rice for brown rice or vegetable oil instead of avocado oil, it won’t be quite as healthy. That being said, it’s still a far better option than eating fast food or something filled with tons of sodium and other preservatives. In addition, you can prepare a large amount of food and then portion it out to eat later on during the week. This helps you stay on track because you’re less tempted to eat a lot of junk food when you’re already pressed for time.

In closing, eating healthier doesn’t have to be difficult or boring. This recipe proves it. All you need to prepare it is some rice, a couple of eggs, and whatever vegetables you have on hand. Before you know it, you can be on the road to eating healthier and you don’t have to spend a lot of time in the kitchen in order to do it.

This is a Sponsored guest post by Danail Donchev