Super quick veggie fried rice, Tips of making Chinese fried rice

My morning routine has been changed since my pal’s new job, he must leave home at 7 in the morning and would like to have lunch box. In order to have freshly-made food, I usually cook for lunch box in the morning, especially when I prepare green vegetable. Thus, I now get up at about 6 and prepare lunch box and breakfast at the same time within an hour. This is quite a challenge, so I have been designing recipes without too much cooking and preparation. Most washing and chopping would be done the night before, and ingredients would be stored in fridge. In this way, it will take lesser time the other day.

Fried rice is one of the favourite among my lunchbox categories. The idea of making fried rice is not to waste any food or to finish leftover. So with some leftover steamed rice, chopped leftover vegetables, meat, spring onion, sausage, egg, anyone can make quick and delicious fried rice.

Here are some tips for making fried rice –
1. Freshly-steamed rice is moist and lumpy for making fried rice. So chill the rice in fridge. Usually I would make a bigger portion of rice the dinner before and save some for the other day;
2. Southern Chinese or Cantonese like long grain rice. But no need to be scrupulous, in my opinion, any rice would do, short grain, jasmine, basmati, even brown rice;
3. Mix-and-match of different vegetables and meats makes tasty and nutritious fried rice. But no need to be so precise on the proportion of the ingredients;
4. Cooked rice would absorb too much oil but oil is good friend of fried rice. My suggestion for not consuming too much oil are 1)use a non-stick frying pan or wok; 2)don’t use too much oil at once, a little at the beginning, then sprinkle a little more at last, see more of this below.

Ingredients –
 Leftover steamed rice
 Snow pea sprout, is so sweet and delicate when seasonal these two months. Replace it with other green vegetables, such as choy-sum/Chinese broccoli, bok-choy, or asparagus, green vegetable is the key ingredient in this recipe
 Leek
 Medium firm tofu
 Egg
 Spring onion
 Douban sauce or any chili sauce, optional, replace it with light soy sauce or oyster sauce.

How to do –
1. For making fried rice, I always use leftover rice. Keep the leftover rice in fridge. Any pre-cooked steamed rice would do but never freshly cooked rice. Usually I would break the rice lumps in the frying pan but in case not to break the tofu later, break the rice lumps with stirring spoon beforehand;

2. For a quicker preparation of lunch box early morning the other day, I would do most of the cleaning and chopping the night before and keep in fridge. In this recipe, I use firm tofu, cut in small dices. Leek sliced; Pea sprout washed, strained, also keep in fridge;

3. Heat a little oil in high heat in a wok or a big frying pan, pan-fry the tofu cubes till golden; Then mix with the leek, also stir-fry till fragrant;

4. Put in the rice, lower to medium-high heat, flip and stir-fry till all mixed up and a little rice crust at the bottom;

5. Push the rice aside, leave some room for the egg, add a little oil, and crack in eggs, wait till slightly set, then flip, stir and mix well;

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6. Season with chili sauce and a nip of salt, flip and mix well;

7. Put in the pea sprout, lid on, and cook for several seconds, then flip and mix well. A little sesame oil or oil on the wok edges, a handful of chopped spring onion, flip or stir-fry, then serve right away.