Survival Sunday 225: Breakfast A La Leftovers

What do you do if you have leftover rice and steak, but you're hungry for breakfast?

You make steak fried rice, is what! KOREAN STYLE!

Here's what I used:

• 1 egg
• peanut oil
• leftover rice
• leftover steak
• sriracha ketchup
• some butter (maybe 1/2 Tablespoon?)

Here's what I wanted to use, but we were out of:

• green peppers
• red peppers
• carrots
• onion
• Thai basil

This is a random egg in a glass bowl. I didn't take pictures of my egg.
I didn't take many pictures, I was busy.

1) Prep all of your ingredients so you can cook fast. Your best bets for this are to cube your leftover meat (you can use any leftover protein in this, I just had a small strip steak on-hand!), then crack your egg into the rice and mix the egg and rice together. Leave those off to one side. Then pour a little oil into your pan!

I used peanut because the canola was buried.
DO NOT USE olive or sesame oils.
Those oils burn quickly and ruin pans, ambiance, and meals.

2) Heat up your pan and oil a bit. I stayed on the lower end of things and grabbed a pot lid to keep the spatters down. Once your oil is hot enough (which is really an "up-to-you" thing, since this recipe is pretty loosey-goosey), carefully add your protein (and any veggies you may have!) and begin heating the meat/tofu.  A few words of warning:

• If you're using veggies, you put the heaviest ones in first and cook them for a while.
• If you're using tofu, get as much moisture out as possible and dredge it in corn starch/cornflour to prevent explosive spattering and grease burns
• If you have a kitchen screen (the round ones that look like a flat sieve), this is a good time to use it.
• This will absolutely spit and spatter, no matter what you've added

This steak was precooked, so I really only wanted to heat and possibly crisp it.

 3) After your steak looks almost ready, prepare to pour your rice/egg mix in there! Be prepared for extra splatter, but! once your rice begins to absorb your oil, it'll get nice and calm in that pan. Be prepared to move this mix around as much as possible. I oiled up a silicone spatula for this purpose, since the one I have attracts rice like a wedding...

You may have noticed that I haven't specified a temperature.
Everything's already cooked, so getting it so it won't kill you is a moot point.
I started the meat on med, lowered the temp as I got to the end, added rice/eggs on med-low, slowly increased it
You want the rice to get hot, the egg to cook, and the whole meal to come together.

 4) Finally, it's time to add seasonings. Since the rice and meat had both been cooked before, I didn't have to add salt or pepper, but if you've got a craving, go ahead and add that now. This is also when you add your butter, just because we hate our arteries here, but we love flavor. If you're using salted butter, you probably don't need to add any other salt. You can also add your sriracha, ketchup, sriracha ketchup, or other saucey-ingredient here! I didn't add nearly enough. You can go pretty crazy, I think.

Regardless, you want to mix it in thoroughly!

5) If you have anything else to add, like fresh chives or basil or green onion, etc, now is when you add the pre-plating garnishes and prepare to turn this all out onto a plate. Trust me, you want a dinner plate, not a salad plate, unless you're taking this out with a spoon. I smooshed the rice into kind of a long mountain so it would all slid out as one unit.

Which it did, to my joy.

I strongly recommend reusing leftovers as much as possible for as many kinds of meals as possible, since you can get some really cool experimentation out of that. I mean, who doesn't like a meatloaf sandwich (and that includes "meat" loaf sandwiches, for vegetarians/vegans) or a nice "Everything" soup?

If you've got food in the fridge, and no one else is eating it, that's when you get creative and make something like this!

Experiment with different kinds of rice - this was just some plain white rice that had been boiled and already had a little butter in it, but you know that wild rice or rice pilaf would be interesting!

Experiment with your proteins - steak is great, but now I want to know how this would've tasted with some MorningStar Black Bean Burger or some chicken breast... maybe bacon? Turkey bacon?

Experiment with vegetables and greens - spinach and artichoke hearts for a more Mediterranean flair with balsamic instead of ketchup! Or katsu sauce with green onion, sesame, and daikon for a more Japanese experience (best with Sushi rice?)! What about trying some peas and curry powder to make it more Indian?

Rice is infinitely customizable, fried rice doubly so.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC