I came up with this fried rice with frozen vegetables when I was looking for a quick dinner meal idea at home.
You don't have time to prep and cut fresh veggies? Use frozen veggies instead!
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Reason to cook this
Fresh veggies are great, but occasionally, you are short on time, but you still want a home cooked meal.
You can use frozen veggies in this fried rice recipe instead and save prepping time in the process.
Frozen veggies are vegetables frozen at their peak freshness moment. Therefore, they still make for a tasty addition to your fried rice.
This recipe is also more budget-friendly and sustainable if you can use frozen veggies from your last harvest or buy a bulk of mixed frozen veggies on sale.
Ingredients
To cook the rice:
- Rice — plain long grain white rice or special rice such as basmati or jasmine rice.
- Salt Water
For the homemade stir-fry sauce:
- Soy Sauce — commonly available soy sauce such as Kikkoman or special soy sauce, such as mushroom soy sauce.
- Ketchup OR Sriracha Sauce hot sauce
- Vinegar — a milder vinegar is better. In Asia, they use rice vinegar, but you can use regular distilled white vinegar or white wine vinegar too.
- Sugar — regular sugar or brown sugar. (to balance out sour, salty spicy flavors)
To fry rice:
- Mix of Frozen Vegetables — Can be a combo of carrots, peas, corn, green beans, cauliflower, broccoli, or other mixed vegetables of your choice.
- Oil — neutral oil such as vegetable oil, sunflower oil or canola oil OR flavorful oils to add an Asian touch to your dish, such as peanut oil or sesame oil (plain or toasted).
- Ginger Garlic — I, personally, prefer to use a ginger and garlic paste OR grate ginger fine and press garlic through a garlic press or chop garlic.
There are no onions in this fried rice recipe. So, if you are Jain, you can choose to skip the ginger and garlic too.
By the way, the base recipe is technically vegan.
Tip: Instead of 4 ingredients to make this stir-fry sauce, make a stir-fry sauce with 3 ingredients instead.
How to make it?
Technically, the best fried rice is made with leftover plain cooked white rice. The better version of that is refrigerated leftover cold rice.
Yet, you can still make great fried rice with freshly cooked rice. Therefore, I have placed step 1, cooking rice, as “optional”.
I leave it up to you.
Step 1 (optional)
Cook rice in salt water if you don't want to use leftover rice.
The rice should not be too much cooked, cook it to the bite and if needed, undercook it slightly (or else it will get mushy when you want to stir-fry it).
Step 2
Combine the stir-fry sauce ingredients. That's the soy sauce, vinegar, ketchup or sriracha and brown sugar.
Step 3
Heat a wok or a deep large skillet (yep, you can use a skillet) with the oil and drop in your frozen veggies before the oil gets hot (because it will splutter otherwise).
Step 4
Stir cook and add the ginger and garlic.
Step 5
Stir in the cooked rice and pour over the rice the prepared stir-fry sauce.
Step 6
Stir cook, rice, and veggies over a high heat setting. Do that until it's all cooked through and well mixed up, for 2 minutes or so.
The rice should not turn mushy. If you stir cook and mix too much (and overcooked the rice) your fried rice will turn out mushy and sticky.
Serve up your vegetable fried rice when done.
📖 Recipe
Fried Rice with Frozen Vegetables Recipe
Ingredients
To cook Rice (only if you don't have leftover cooked rice)
- 2½ cup Water
- 1 cup Rice white, uncooked
- ½ Teapsoon Salt
Cooked Leftover Rice
- 3½ cup Rice white, cooked and strained
Stir Fry Sauce
To assemble Fried Rice
- 2 Tablespoon Oil
- 3 cups Mix of Frozen Vegetables *See Notes
- 1 Tablespoon Ginger + Garlic grated or paste
Instructions
To cook Rice if you don't have Leftover cooked Rice
- Rinse your rice well in water to get rid of excess starch and dirt. Strain.1 cup Rice
- Add water to the rice in a pan with salt and bring to a boil.½ Teapsoon Salt, 2½ cup Water
- Cook your rice for about 8 minutes, or until it's almost done, on a medium heat setting. It should be to the bite. The rice should not be soft and mushy.
- Strain rice, fluff it and keep at the side.
Prepare Stir-Fry Sauce
- In a small bowl, combine soy sauce, ketchup (or sriracha), vinegar and sugar to a smooth stir-fry sauce.2½ Tablespoon Soy Sauce, 2 Tablespoon Ketchup, 1-2 Teaspoon Vinegar, 1 Teaspoon Sugar
To assemble the Fried Rice
- Heat oil in a wok or large skillet and directly add the vegetables in. Don't wait for the oil to get too hot to add the veggies, or else the frozen or thawed veggies will splutter.2 Tablespoon Oil, 3 cups Mix of Frozen Vegetables
- Keep on a medium heat setting and briefly stir cook veggies on all sides for a minute or two.
- Stir in ginger and garlic. Stir cook everything.1 Tablespoon Ginger + Garlic
- Fluff the rice a bit again and add the rice over the veggies, and quickly pour the previously prepared homemade stir-fry sauce over the rice.3½ cup Rice
- Keep on a higher heat setting. Stir cook and mix the rice with two spatulas so that it all gets to cook through and fry for a few minutes.
- When it looks done, take the pan from the heat and serve up your fried rice.
Notes
- The cooking of the rice was not included in the total time because I recommend using leftover cooked rice.
- Boiling, or cooking rice in the rice cooker, takes about 8 minutes.
- See post for ingredient recommendations.
- Use a mix of frozen veggies of your choice. I used corn, peas, cauliflower, and carrots. You can add broccoli too and snap peas.
- You can also use my 3 ingredient stir-fry sauce instead of the sauce ingredients in this recipe. Switch the sauce ingredients with 5 ½ tablespoon of my 3 ingredient stir-fry sauce.
Equipment
- Wok or Large deep Skillet
- Small Mixing Bowl to prep stir fry sauce
Nutrition
Ingredient additions
You are free to add more ingredients to this fried rice. That means, you can break in eggs and fry them, you can stir in shrimp, chicken, and tofu.
I have more fried rice recipes that show the process of adding these proteins while you are frying your rice.
That includes:
Tips
Cooking fried rice can be a nightmare if you don't respect the art of cooking rice.
It can so easily turn into a messy mash, and I, personally, went through all these stages at some point in my life.
Fortunately, you just need to follow these simple rules when cooking and preparing fried rice. I have gone through the motion for you.
- Not every rice is the same, and a higher quality rice doesn't guarantee perfectly cooked rice.
- Rinse your rice in water. Take it through clear water a few times and wash the kernels with your hands in the water. This will remove excess starch (and dirt), which would make your rice mushy. Discard the water.
- Cook your white rice in salt water uncovered. For every cup of white rice, use about 2 ½ cup water. As a side note, brown rice varieties require more water and time to cook.
- Monitor your cooking rice. Cook white rice for fried rice for about 8–10 minutes at most. The rice should be to the bite (al dente) and not too soft.
- If your rice is too soft, keep it in the fridge until it hardens a bit again in the dry and cold refrigerator environment.
- Ideally, use only refrigerated plain cooked rice to make fried rice. It's much easier to stir-fry rice that was left in the fridge to cool and dry.
- If you intend to cook fried rice at night, prep and boil plain white rice in the morning and keep it in the fridge. When you come home at night, you will have cooled rice, which is just perfect for fried rice. This will also save you time to prep your dinner.
- Once you add the rice to the wok or large skillet, quickly pour the stir-fry sauce over that and keep it all over a high heat to stir-fry. The higher heat helps in up keeping the right fried rice consistency.
- Do not add more stir-fry sauce than needed to the recipe, or else you will be left with a soggy, sticky mash. Just stick to my recipe.
- I use one spatula to stir-fry the fried rice in the video, but honestly, it's much easier to stir-fry fried rice with two spatulas at the same time.
Storing
Keep leftover fried rice in an airtight container for up to 5 days in your fridge. I like to use stackable rectangular glass containers which come with a lid (I get the IKEA ones).
This makes for a great meal prepping dish, so either you store batches in your fridge or in the freezer.
If you freeze your fried rice, thaw in the fridge overnight.
To reheat your leftovers, cook them again in a pan on a medium-high heat setting, or gradually heat your vegetable fried rice in the oven or in the microwave.
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