Chinese is Chineasy! :)

I must have inherited my Grandmother's aversion to throwing food away. I save all scraps of food and try to incorporate them into a dish in one way or another. I actually laugh at my mom for doing this, but I secretly and shamelessly can not turn away from this inherited gift to give any and all leftovers a face lift and turn them into dinner for some other night.

Being Hispanic, my family eats a lot of rice with our meals. I think over 80% of our meals include rice as a side dish, because of this, I also find myself with lots of rice as leftovers.

And so a typical Tuesday evening begins. I lie, there is nothing typical in my life...

I was actually craving Chinese food with all of its crunchy good for you vegetables, and I knew I had a pot of leftover rice from Sunday that needed to be utilized ASAP. It would not go to waste, not on my watch (and its always my watch),

So off I go, flying through the kitchen (don't worry its not a very large kitchen) looking for all the ingredients needed to make Chicken fried rice.


For this dish you will need:

6 Boneless/skinless chicken thighs cut into bite size pieces (You can use Chicken breast but I find this a bit dry) I've also made it with Shrimp and its oh so good!
4 cups of leftover white rice (you can make this ahead the night before)
1 Red bell pepper cut into cubes
1 pack of snow peas cut into pieces
1 pack of Scallions cut up
1/2 a medium yellow onion cut into cubes
About 1/2 a cup of Soy sauce
A dash of Worcestershire sauce
1 chunk of fresh ginger (ginger freezes real well, so you can use what you want and freeze the rest in a zip bag. The plus? you don't have to peel frozen ginger, the frozen peel actually never grates! You're welcome)
Sesame seeds
Sesame seed oil, you can use regular olive oil instead

Heat the oil in a large pot, wait until hot and sprinkle about a palm full of sesame seeds wait a minute until you hear them or see them popping and put in the chopped up onions. Caramelize. Add the chicken and leave it alone. Don't stir it, don't do anything, just let it be. I know, hard right? wait until about 10 minutes have passed by or until you see that it has developed a nice brown color on the side that is touching the pot. Now you are free to stir. Move it around and grate about 2 or 3 tablespoons of ginger into the chicken. Add about 1/4 of the cup of soy sauce and a couple of shakes of the Worcestershire. Cover and let it simmer on low until it is cooked through. Remove into a large bowl with all the juices.

In the same pot add a bit more of oil and add half the vegetables. You don't want to cook these veggies, you want them to stay crunchy and bright, so sauteing will only take about 5 minutes TOPS. Add half of the remaining soy sauce and shave about 1 tablespoon of ginger. Remove to a bowl. Do the same with the other half of the veggies. The reason why you don't want to do them all at once is because you want to stir fry them, if you crowd the pot they will just get watery and mushy.

Add the already cooked leftover rice to the pot and stir so that the rice can get coated with some of the left over bits of soy sauce and heat up. Add the veggies and chicken and mix in as well.

I usually add more ginger and soy sauce at the end to my liking.

(disclaimer: The pot in the picture was the first pot my mom purchased when we arrived to this country almost 20 years ago. Yes, it is old and battered and not very nice to look at but I will never get rid of it. I have made firm plans to be buried with it actually)

Finished! You have a dinner that is full of yummy good for you veggies (I like to add some bean sprouts as well, but I didn't have any on hand today) that was made in about 30 minutes. Seriously, no take out can beat that!