Better than takeout chicken fried rice, all homemade and healthier. This recipe is without MSG.
Your dinner can be ready within 15 minutes in just one pot!
What is fried rice?
Fried rice is a Chinese one-pot meal. Cooked rice is stir-fried in a shallow pan with oil and a set of ingredients.
Various combinations of ingredients can be added to fried rice and a stir fry sauce is added as well.
Other Asian countries have popularized fried rice in their food culture too.
Japanese fried rice, Thai fried rice, and American-Chinese fried rice (i.e. panda express fried rice) have also picked up in popularity in the rest of the world.
How to make chicken fried rice?
Here an overview of how to make this dish from scratch.
The complete recipe with ingredients and detailed instructions can be printed at the bottom of this post. You can also watch the video!
Step 1
Prepare stir fry sauce.
Keep all ingredients ready including cooked rice.
Step 2
Heat up a pan and stir fry vegetables and chicken one at a time
Step 3
Add rice to the pan and spread sauce over rice. Stir cook until well combined.
Garnish with sliced green onion stalks and serve up hot.
Flavor variations
To enhance your fried rice you can add the following ingredients to your homemade chicken fried rice.
- pineapple chunks – like a Thai fried rice
- curry powder – to make a spicy Singapore themed fried rice
- teriyaki sauce – for a Japanese flavored fried rice
- egg – because it tastes even better with eggs scrambled in
- xo sauce – that’s a spicy seafood sauce in Hongkong
- sesame oil – sprinkled over your rice just before serving it up
- broccoli or cauliflower
- basil – such as Thai basil, holy basil (tulsi) or even common sweet basil
Storing leftovers
Keep your leftovers in a fridge friendly storage container.
Just heat it up again in a hot pan when you want to eat it.
Leftovers are good for about 4-5 days at most in your fridge.
FAQs
Cook rice half through or al dente for fried rice. That way your rice won’t turn out mushy when you attempt to fry it. Another trick is to use leftover rice that was left in the fridge because the kernels dry out in the cold fridge air.
MSG is short for Monosodium glutamate. It’s a common concentrated food additive with an E number. Commercial Asian food is loaded with MSG because it adds tons of umami flavor to a dish. A high dosage of MSG might not be all too good for your health.
Use leftover plain cooked rice and already cooked leftover chicken (rotisserie chicken). If you skip cutting and adding carrots and spring onions you save another 5 minutes or get precut vegetables from your grocery store. Instead of chopping garlic and ginger, you can use ginger and garlic paste which will save you another 5 minutes that way your chicken fried rice can get ready within 7 minutes!
Dear Reader, did you try the Recipe?
Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas with us in the comment section further below!
PIN to save for later!
Subscribe & Get your freE
Chicken Fried Rice Recipe
Ingredients
For the sauce:
- ½ Tablespoon Sugar
- 1 Tablespoon Rice Vinegar or other mild clear vinegar
- 2½ Tablespoon Soy Sauce
- 1 Tablespoon Sriracha Sauce or Ketchup, *see Notes
To fry:
- 2 Tablespoon Oil
- 2-3 Green Onions sliced
- ½ Tablespoon Ginger + Garlic *see Notes
- ½ Carrot diced small
- 2.1 ounces Cabbage shredded or sliced
- 6 ounces Chicken dices or cut into strips
- 2.1 ounces Green Peas
- 1 cup Rice *see Notes
Instructions
- Prepare the sauce by combining sugar, vinegar, sy sauce nad sriracha sauce (or ketchup) in a small bowl. Keep aside.
- Keep all fresh ingredients ready. Separate onion bulbs from stalks and slice, chop ginger and garlic if you use fresh ingredients, diced carrot, shred or slice cabbage and cut chicken into strips or cubes. Also keep soft green peas and cooked rice ready.
- Heat up a shallow pan with the oil. Wait for it to get super hot but the oil shouldn't smoke.
- Add sliced green onion bulbs and ginger + garlic and stir cook over high heat for a minute or so.
- Add carrot and cabbage and stir cook for another minute over high heat.
- Add chicken and cook chicken over high heat on all sides for about 2-3 minutes.
- Add in green peas and the cooked rice and keep over medium heat.
- Pour stir fry sauce over the rice and increase heat.
- Quickly stir cook rice with ingredients in the shallow pan with the help of two spatula. The rice should get uniformly coated with the stir fry sauce and the ingredients should be well mixed in.
- Take from the heat and garnish with sliced green bean stalks.
- Serve up hot and enjoy.
Notes
- Use sriracha to make it spicy and ketchup if you don’t want it spicy.
- Use fresh chopped ginger and garlic. I used ginger and garlic paste in the video (easiest option).
- 1 cup uncooked rice or about 2 1/2 cup cooked rice
Nutrition
This post may contain affiliate links that point to things or services that I recommend. This may include Amazon, getyourguide and booking.com. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Neha says
Looks yummy! I love to have chicken in any form (fried, roasted, curry, boil salad)… I would love to try this out 🙂