Simple Fried Rice-Complexity is Overrated.

I’ll be honest with you. I never understood the idea of taking more than forty minutes to make breakfast. It’s breakfast. If you asked me, it doesn’t need to be fancy, doesn’t need to be Michelin star, it just needs to be tasty and be enough to keep away hunger until your next meal. Of course my opinion on this matter is likely why my breakfasts never seem, sincere—for lack of a better word, anyways. It’s usually just whatever at the local Fay Da Bakery to be honest. But when I do have the time to cook myself a breakfast, it’s usually the same thing I always cook for breakfast because, well, its simple, its quick, and I’ve never really been a picky eater.

Fried rice is something that you’d find in many different cultures across the world, and the Philippines is no exception. From Sinangag, garlic fried rice, to Aligue rice, which is made with crab fat, and more that I probably can’t pronounce properly. But if there’s one thing that all those different dishes have in common, it’s that to a degree, they’re complex.

The fried rice I make is not. It is by all means a simple dish. It is a simple dish because we already live with enough complexity. Whenever my parents cooked, they never did anything over the top. Sure, they would make meals from recipes that probably had over fifteen different ingredients, but more often than not they’d just throw something into a pot or into a pan and eyeballed it. There is no complexity in that.

My fried rice recipe is special to me because it’s simple. Rice, meat, vegetables, seasoning, that’s all you really need. There is no hour long prep time before you even turn on the stove, no digging for that new bottle of cooking wine you bought three days ago. It is a recipe that takes you through a process that is no more than is written.

I also don’t have measurements on the recipe because my tastes are not the same as yours. Simple doesn’t mean same, it just means simple. What type of vegetables? Your preference. What type of meat? Your preference. What type of rice? Your preference. There is nothing over the top needed, nothing demanding, because breakfast should not be demanding.

When ever I make this fried rice dish I feel a sense of control over it that often seems to be missed in every day life, because no matter how much our lives are ours, we are never fully in control of the events that occur within it. However, cooking is different. When I make fried rice, I choose what I put in it, what I cook it in, where I cook it. It’s just me, the stove, and what’s going to be my breakfast. That fact is what I love about simple recipes, what I love about my fried rice recipe. No thoughts, no struggle. Just a good breakfast that one can eat before taking on the day.

Ingredients

• Day old rice
• Cooking oil(your preference)
• Meat(Your preference)
• Vegetables(your preferance)
• Garlic(powder or clove)
• Ground black pepper
• Dark Soy(or regular)sauce(or none if you don’t want to add it)
• Fish sauce(optional)
• Any spices of your choosing

Measurements are to your preference. Remove anything your allergic too(obviously)

Instructions

1. Set the stove to high heat.
2. Put just enough oil on a pan to coat the surface.
3. If the meat of your choosing is raw, cook the meat first. Cook the meat to your preference. If your meat is precooked or you’r not adding meat, skip this step.
4. Add day old rice to the pan. Cook until you hear a light simmer from the rice.
5. Add precooked meat, garlic, and vegetables of your preference. Stir them into the rice thoroughly.
6. Add dark soy sauce and fish sauce. Stir thoroughly until the simmer gets louder
7. Add black pepper/spice of your choosing. Stir thoroughly. Cook until the rice fully browns from the sauces