[lively music]
- Hi, I'm Emily and I'm a level one chef.
- I'm Lorenzo and I'm a level two chef.
- Hi, I'm king and I'm
a chef instructor at
The Institute of Culinary Education
and I've been a chef for 20 years.
[lively music]
- This is my hangover
fried rice basically,
I would love to level up some day
but this is not the recipe
that's gonna get me there.
- I was born eating fried rice [laughs].
Just a fun combo that
you can really kind of
mess up and still be good.
- Whenever we have
something in the fridge,
kind of put it together
and make fried rice.
Today's a little bit elevated.
First element of fried rice is.
- [All] Rice!
- I like using day old rice
- Day old rice.
- It's dried out a
little bit so not sticky,
you don't wanna have a clumpy fried rice.
- Sometimes you don't have old rice
but you still have a hangover so you have
to figure out what to do about that.
In this case, it's gonna be make rice.
- This is our day old,
long grain rice that
we will be cooking today.
- So what I have here
is just your standard
Uncle Ben's type of rice.
Weee, I'm going to mix it with water.
So I'm gonna be bringing
this rice to a boil.
Go, go, go!
And we're gonna cover
this up and bring it down
to a simmer now, just gonna
leave it, 10ish minutes and--
My rice is cooked, look at that!
Two kinds of protein
going in, I have SPAM,
I love SPAM, so this I SPAM,
sort of like a pork cold cut,
I'm gonna slice it up to
put it in my fried rice.
So I've got some bigger chunks
and I'm gonna make these
ones some smaller chunks,
little SPAM surprise in every bite.
Here!
- Today I have 10 jumbo
shrimp
- Shrimp,
take the heads off, the tails off,
just like to squeeze the end
and pull it off in one shot.
- These are really plump and yummy.
- We are gonna also devein them.
We're gonna put that in there,
we're not gonna eat that.
And our shrimp are clean.
- Put a little lemon juice in it,
I'm just marinating it slightly.
Two cloves of garlic, add
like salt and pepper to it
and crush it, now let's add
this delicious sesame oil
and I have dill, dills fun.
Mix this all together.
It smells really good, and there you go!
Marinated shrimp.
- I have
eggs!
- Eggs!
- This is really not for beginners.
- I am just going to crack six eggs.
It's a complicated procedure.
- Am I gonna attempt a ninja?
Am I gonna temp the ninja?
Yes!
- That was tough.
- Pepper.
Salt.
And I'm just gonna whisk this.
That is that--
- And these are my
proteins for my fried rice!
- Now this is easy peasy, this is
Chinese sausage
- Chinese sausage
- Which is so delicious, my gosh.
- We're gonna cut this into small rings.
It's cooked, I could take a
bite out of this if I wanted to.
- I'm gonna use it as a topping.
- Next up, we're gonna cut our chicken,
slice it around the
same size as our shrimp
and our sausage.
- Okay,
vegetables [laughs].
- First thing I'm gonna do is the
scallions
- Scallions.
- That'll be quick and easy.
- I'll save you guys for later.
- The scallion I'm
really only going to use
as a topping at the end
but I'm choppin' it up now
'cause uh, nows a good a time as any.
Seize the day, carpe diem!
- For the sauteing of my vegetables,
I like using these bottom portions.
- Are my knife skills incredible?
Yes, no.
- Just a little fancy,
but it's nice to have a
little fancy sometimes.
- For a garnish, we're
just gonna use the green
tops of the scallions
- Tops of the scallions.
- Slice on the bias and nice and thin.
- And this will just be
that pretty little accent
on the top of the darn dish.
- And the next thing I
will do is grate my ginger.
I'm just gonna chop
off a little limb here.
Peel this, carefully.
Grate my ginger, and we've got our ginger!
I have some frozen peas.
- We got delicious,
crunchy, water chestnuts
let's do garlic
- Garlic!
I'll just take my chef's
knife and just smash.
- [Lorenzo] Slice it up,
chop it up a little bit.
- I have some minced garlic
which I had already, pre minced.
- I like the smashed
garlic a little better
because if you slice this too small,
the little pieces of garlic will burn.
And there's our garlic.
- I have two
carrots
- Carrots,
do I have to peel this carrot?
- I never do, I really never do,
I just wash it and it's fine.
Easy prep.
Carrots are difficult,
they're so tiny and rolly.
Something that makes life a
lot easier is to cut things
in half so that you have
a flat surface so that
they don't roll around.
- Cut it in half.
- Oh did she just give good advice, damn!
I'm gonna watch this back and be like
Emily, gotta work on your knife skills!
- A little thinner 'cause
I wanna cook evenly
with everything else.
- And I think we're just
about ready to go here.
- And then I have green
beans, maybe cut three times,
and I have oh, wow, I love mushrooms!
These are pretty big so all
I'm gonna do is cut this
in half, now our napa cabbage,
I'm just gonna slice it up, boom boom boom
- [All] Onion!
- For me that's a staple of fried rice.
- We are gonna actually use half of it.
- Onions kinda give me gas
so I under shoot a little,
you know, shhh, don't tell.
- Follow the lines of
the onion and just slice
right along with the onion.
- Really putting me to work today.
- Easy!
And there's our onions.
- So I've got our onion all chopped.
- The edamame has already been shelled,
so those are ready to go
and we have our vegetables.
- So let's go folks, let's do it.
- The next thing I'm
gonna do is I'm gonna cook
all of my stuff together,
make some fried rice.
- I'm gonna cook our rice in a wok,
we're gonna use
- [All] Canola oil
- And I put in my butter.
- And then I'm going to put my
onions and carrots
- Onions,
some garlic.
- I like to start off with the egg.
Don't worry if it gets
browned a little bit,
it's delicious.
- There's a fine line
between toasty and burned,
we don't want burned, we want toasty.
- I have a tendency to
accidentally burn things 'cause
I don't have a great sense for cooking.
Go figure!
So they're starting to get a little brown
and translucent and yummy looking?
- Okay, you look fantabulous.
- I'm gonna toss in with
my garlic and my ginger
and my SPAM!
Then I'm gonna start
trying to brown that SPAM.
- A little bit more vegetable oil,
we're gonna get our Chinese
sausage
- Sausage, we're gonna build
more flavors into that.
- You have to poke it a little bit,
whenever you make sausages.
- You want that fat to flavor the onions,
to flavor the garlic,
which in turn will flavor
everything else we put in here.
- [Lorenzo] And now you can
see the juices bubbling inside.
- Chicken takes a while
to cook so let's put some
chicken in there.
- My sausage that's already been cooled,
just to be fancy we're
gonna cut it on an angle.
Okey doke, Chinese sausage is prepped.
- This is starting to
look really delicious.
I'm gettin' a lot of ginger
in terms of the smell.
- Now we're gonna say hello
to the shrimp.
- Shrimp.
- It's been marinating a
little bit because I have
lemon juice, you can make it
rubbery if you over cook it.
So, stay here, don't leave your pan.
Just watch these guys!
- My biggest problem
when it comes to cooking
is that I'm incredibly impatient.
- I can see the shrimp
changing now from that
opaque color and starting to turn pink
which means they're getting cooked.
- That smells really good you guys.
- We haven't reached that point yet
where you can smell through
the video but you soon will.
- Yum, I'm gonna take it out!
And if you think I didn't cook it enough,
it is still cooking in
this lovely jovely bowl.
So, this was a big half onion,
I'm just gonna put these guys in.
Oh hello red pepper flakes,
put the green onions in,
my garlic, sesame oil, shiitake mushrooms,
water chestnuts, little
salt, little pepper,
napa cabbage, rice wine vinegar,
so everything is pretty much cooked down.
- We're lookin' really good right now,
let's go in with our
- [All] Rice.
- [Lorenzo] I'm gonna
add some garlic powder
and also a little bit of salt.
- Maybe not be ideal
rice for this situation,
but it is better than nothing.
- Let's let this get hot again.
- [Emily] And I'm just tossing
my frozen peas in here.
- And you are going to go right in this,
I'm just mixing it together.
- We're gonna put a little
oil in here and just gonna
crack our eggs
- Our eggs!
Half, it will also be
my topping for later.
- Mix our egg.
Stir in some of our edamame beans.
- The sauces that I have here are
sesame oil
- Sesame oil,
not too much, just a little bit.
- 'Cause it is pretty potent.
- A little bit of a--
- [All] Soy sauce.
- Gonna eyeball it you guys.
- And this is rice vinegar
and I'm just gonna mix those up.
- Oyster sauce, love this stuff.
- I'm going to add my eggs in,
gonna try and get the egg
kind of all over everything
as much as I can because the
egg makes everything delicious.
The egg does a lot of the
hard work of this fried rice.
- Now hello lovely juices!
Wow wow wow wow wow wow wow!
Yowzer folks!
Now in you go, warming it through,
I don't need to cook ya!
- And one of my secret
weapons, crab paste.
Little bit goes a long way.
- I think this is just about done.
- I've got fried rice.
- That's our fried rice.
- I'm just gonna plate it
and add some toppings now.
So I have my delicious
SPAM and egg fried rice.
- Get a little bit of everything.
Green beans.
- Those jewels of shrimp
and sausage and chicken.
We're gonna hit it now
with our japanese mayo.
- Gonna use a little siracha!
Yeah!
- Now I take a little
bit more egg, yummy yum!
My Chinese sausage, delicious-o!
- For a topping, seaweed, sesame seeds,
and this one has bonito flakes
which is a smoked fish shaved really thin.
- OH I love a little fresh
scallions
- Scallions there.
You go folks.
- You know me, I'm gonna put
a little ketchup on the side.
But you don't have to do that.
This is my fried rice for
when you're feeling broke,
hungover or eh just when you want it.
[dramatic music]
- And this is my fried rice.
[dramatic music]
- And this is my fried rice.
[dramatic music]
[soft music]
- I hope it tastes as good as it looks
because I think it looks really good.
[soft music]
- Mmm
- Mhm!
- Yeah.
It just sings.
- Typically, to be humble,
it'd be an eight-ish.
I'm giving myself a 10, why not?
- You know that mouth
feel from the shrimp,
from the crab paste,
you can taste every
little component in there
which is great, gonna have another bite.
- Fried rice is a dish that truly
only is limited by one's imagination
and what's left in your refrigerator.
Let's take a look at how
each of our chefs approached
this widely varied dish.
[dramatic music]
Emily cooled her rice
briefly which helps to keep
rice grains separated as they
condense a bit upon cooling
becoming hard and thereby
maintaining individual grains
that can be coated with flavorful
fats and seasonings when frying.
Lorenzo and King cooled
their rice overnight
which has the advantage of
having some of the water
evaporate very slowly under refrigeration
so their rice was even harder
and will stay separated even better!
[dramatic music]
Emily's protein was SPAM and eggs.
- [laughs] I love SPAM, I do!
- SPAM is a mixture of ham and pork,
if that sounds redundant, let me explain.
Pork is what we call meat
from sany part of the pig.
Ham however, is pork that
comes from a specific part
of the pig, its hind leg.
- There might be other meats in there too,
I don't know, that's what SPAMs all about,
you're not supposed to know.
- [Rose] Pork and ham are ground together,
mixed with sugar, salt,
water, usually potato starch
and sodium nitrite which
gives SPAM its distinct pink
color and acts as an excellent
anti-microbial in cured meats
It also slows rancidity so
you won't have any developed
off flavors or odors.
Lorenzo used shrimp and Chinese
sausage as his proteins.
Shrimp adds a wonderful
seafood flavor while
Chinese sausage is a broad
term for various sausages
that tend to be on the dry side,
have slight sweet and salty flavors,
and a very fine grind.
They're also high in fat so
they carry flavors very well.
King used sliced white chicken meat,
which is lower in fat,
lower in connective tissue,
and myoglobin, which is
why it's so light in color.
He also uses Chinese sausage and shrimp,
just like our level two chef, Lorenzo.
[dramatic music]
All three chefs included garlic and onion,
both of which have flavor
compounds that become more mild
when cooked in oil, when
you saute garlic and onions
in oil you extract the lipid
soluble flavor compounds
and infuse the rest of the
dish with these aromatics
as the oil is dispersed throughout.
All three also used soy sauce,
which is a fermented product of soybeans.
It's dark in color and very salty.
Each incorporated sesame oil as well,
which is also dark and
infused with a toasty, nutty,
sesame flavor, it can
be a bit over powering
so you wanna use it sparingly.
- 'Cause it's powerful you guys,
we don't want it to just
over power everything.
- [Rose] Emily was the
only chef to add ginger.
Which is distinctive in
flavor and adds a slight bite
due to the presence of gingerol
which is a chemical relative
to casaicin in chili peppers
and piperine in black pepper.
She also added carrots for
color and slight crunch.
Carrots retain their bright
orange color when cooked
in oil because oil protects beta carotene
from oxidation and bleaching.
She added green peas, which were frozen.
Frozen vegetables are
great to use in a dish
like fried rice because
they retain their shape
and nutritional quality well.
Lorenzo added carrots and napa cabbage.
Napa cabbage is rich in
vitamin C and has a fair amount
of calcium and tastes mildly
aromatic unless over cooked,
when it can have more of
a pungent sulfery flavor
because it contains hydrogen sulfide.
He quickly stir fried his rice
with no prolonged cooking
so it wasn't a problem here!
He added fresh shiitake
mushrooms which will
add moisture to his rice
and water chestnuts.
Water chestnuts contain
phenolic compounds that form
cross links in their cells
and it strengthens the cells
walls and keeps water
chestnuts persistently crunchy,
even after prolonged cooking.
King added shelled edamame
which is fresh soybeans
for a bit of extra protein
crunch and green color.
He also seasoned with oyster sauce,
made from fermented
oysters and fish sauce,
traditionally aged in
barrels for weeks to months.
All three of our chefs added eggs
which are a traditional
part of fried rice.
Emily and King scrambled their eggs
with the rice while Lorenzo
cooked his separately
and added them at the end
causing Lorenzo's eggs
to look like a addition
instead of an incorporation.
- Whoops.
[dramatic music]
- Emily and Lorenzo used
non-stick frying pans,.
Non-stick coating on pans of
this type are made from teflon
which is like a plastic because
it's a polymer of carbon
chained stabilized with fluorine atoms.
This works well and you
won't have any starchy rice
that clings to the bottom of the pan.
King used a wok which
is a more traditional
method of cooking fried rice dishes.
Woks conduct heat extremely well,
both in the center which
is the portion of the pan
receiving direct heat and
also around the slanted sides
of the dish keeping all ingredients warm.
All three cooked at high heat
for a short amount of time.
[dramatic music]
Emily garnished with
crunchy green scallions
and pepper sauce along with
her ever present ketchup.
So we aren't disappointed there,
it's spicy, tangy and tasty.
Lorenzo garnished with
scrambled eggs and scallions.
King also used a pepper sauce and crunchy,
raw green scallions but added
a visual as well as tasty
addition by utilizing Japanese mayonnaise.
It's made with only
the egg yolk as opposed
to American mayonnaise which
typically uses the whole egg.
It certainly added visual
appeal to King's fried rice.
There truly isn't a right
or wrong way to make
fried rice it's often just a
matter of what is available
at the moment the hunger strikes you.
Next time you're looking to
clean out your leftovers,
we hope you'll take
inspiration from our chefs.
