When I was a kid my dad would routinely cook Vietnamese Fried Rice. It seemed like once a week at least, but that may be my memory running on kid time. I remember just as routinely I would complain loudly, lurching about in my chair at the table. I wasn’t big into vegetables, especially onions. I couldn’t handle that onion crunch. And there were onions-a-plenty in Vietnamese Fried Rice.
Well for some reason today I suddenly had a craving for Vietnamese Fried Rice. I probably haven’t had it since high school (or even thought about it since then), but I was sitting at my computer this afternoon and just like that I wanted some. I tried to remember what went into it, focusing on all those ingredients I used to freak out about. I remembered rice of course, onions, eggs, peas, soy sauce. Green beans maybe? But I knew there had to be more than that. I looked up a bunch of recipes online and they were all across the board, but at least I could get a general idea of the main staples and how to cook them. Ended up adding garlic and carrots also. The only thing that we didn’t have in the house were peas, so I picked up a bag of frozen peas and carrots on the way back from working out at the gym tonight.
It definitely didn’t turn out quite as I remembered it. Probably because I’m a terrible cook and the rice was kind of mushy and I used bagged veggies instead of ingredients we used to pull straight from the backyard garden. Oh, and we didn’t have any soy sauce, even though I thought we did before I stopped at the store. So I realized how important the soy sauce was and it was a bit bland. Pepper helped a little. Still, in the end it was close enough to reach my craving. I just need more practice.
Looks like you made a good effort. The recipe we always used came from the MORE WITH LESS cookbook:
Cook 1 cup rice or have ready 3 cups leftover rice.
Heat in large skillet: 4 T. cooking oil.
Add:
1/4 to 1/2 lb. any cooked or raw meat cut in thin strips.
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
1 t. salt
1 t. pepper (we used less–maybe 1/2 t.?)
1 t. sugar
1 T. soy sauce
Stir-fry till meat is tender and hot, about 1 to 2 minutes.
Add 3 c. cooked rice.
Stir-fry 5 minutes.
Add 1 c. leftover or frozen vegetables such as peas, green beans, carrots.
Stir well into rice, meat mixture.
Just before serving add 2 eggs, beaten. Stir carefully over medium heat until eggs are cooked.
Serves 4.
I feel as though Id probably refused to eat that as well when at your house while we were growing up. Children are foolish. That looks and sounds really good right now.
Well, there you go! Actually I think that’s almost the recipe I went with. I skipped the sugar since that sounded strange to me, I’ll have to try that next time, and didn’t use enough vegetable oil. And added the eggs too early. And the soy sauce.
Good memories… You inspired me to try the same thing. Except I didn’t have garlic or onions or sugar or soy sauce. It took me about an hour and a half, so I’m not sure it’s worth the bother, but I think it turned out to be pretty good. It looked slightly more fried and slightly less mushy than yours at the end.