Kimchi Fried Rice
This matters to me because...
This is a spin on a classic dish I've grown up eating: fried rice. Sure, I've already done pineapple fried rice, but I wanted to take on a Korean version of the dish, as opposed to Thai. It's a relatively easy dish, and it came together very fast.
The thing I focused most this time around was technique and using my wok to the best of my ability.
Ingredients
- Leftover white rice
- Egg
- Frozen cooked shrimp
- Onions
- Scallions
- Garlic
- Kimchi (and kimchi juice)
2 Comments
- I like the way I cook my sunny-side up egg. I first crack an egg onto a non-stick pan on medium heat. Once the bottom has been slightly cooked, use a lid to cover the pan and do some small "steaming". This ensures that the egg yolk get properly heated to kill bacteria.
- My impression of woks is that it doesn't fare well with acid. Same goes with cast-iron and other carbon-steel pans. Doing kimchi fried rice in it definitely felt like I was ruining the non-stick seasoning layer I've worked so hard to make, so I did a round of seasoning right after making the fried rice. Never hurts to be a little bit obessive with seasoning your wok.
2 Learnings
- Don't use frozen cooked shrimp if you're planning on cooking it again. The texture of the shrimp was mealy and doesn't have that bouncy-crisp texture when biting into it. I think I added some to the pineapple fried rice dish, and it wasn't as noticeable. However, this time around, it definitely was
- Because of how sour kimchi is, I felt like I needed an extra layer of flavor to counter act that strong taste. Perhaps adding some gochujang would have been nice--it'd also follow with the Korean theme.