Fried Rice

No one’s cooking for dinner tonight, so I decided to make things on my own. I tried to find my go-to simple protein to cook: nuggets and pre-seasoned chicken. Unfortunately, they’re not there. It’s been a while since our last meal prep since mom went for this year’s hajj (I haven’t learned how to make those things, but I’ll learn it soon for survival’s sake. Hopefully to the point where it’s enjoyable for people to eat 😁). Then I remembered, grandma made fried rice for my little cousin approximately an hour earlier. So, I thought, well, fried rice it is!

I searched for things that might be good for my fried rice. I found red onion, garlic, tofu, egg, and frozen smoked beef. Tasty toppings, so I thought. For the seasoning, I found sweet soy sauce, chili sauce, and oyster sauce. It’s good enough to make a simple fried rice. Cooking proceeded!

First and foremost, I needed to make sure of the most important ingredient of all: the rice. I opened up my rice cooker and it turns outthe rice is not in prime condition for making fried rice. It’s too fluffy. Everyone knows that fluffy rice is the worst kind of rice to deal with. It’s harder to mix the seasoning and sauces. But because it’s all I have, I had to find a way to at least make it stiffer and harder to ease the mixing process. I remembered one life hack to condition the rice: leave it overnight in the refrigerator. Unfortunately, I don’t have much time, so I need to find another way.

I thought for a second and concluded (assumed, to be precise) that the reason people put their rice overnight is that lower temperatures reduce the water content within the rice. The less water content, the harder the rice. The harder the rice, the better the fried rice. So, because temperature is the key, I decided to put my fluffy rice in the freezer.

After putting my rice in the freezer, I began to prepare other stuff. The next important thing for me to do is to grind my onion. For the past few days, I’ve spent some time learning how to cook with my friends. In every dish that we made, we always made a ground onion as our base seasoning. And I thought, perhaps this is the key to all Indonesian dishes.

My strategy for ground onion is to put red onion and garlic with a 1:1 ratio. I grind it by hand using a mortar and pestle (every Indonesian household has this). It turns out this is harder because I use the wrong mortar. It’s a flat. I should have used the sunken surfaces because it’s easier to crush the onion and garlic. I expected this to be ground fine, but it’s still quite coarse. But that’s still okay though. My justification is that it’s not a bug; it’s a feature.

After I finished my onion grind, I replanned the details of how to cook my fried rice. From my observation, people put their ground onion first in heated oil, and then put the eggs in afterward. I thought, there should be another way. Putting the onion in the eggs means the flavor of the onion will be limited to the egg alone. What a waste.

With that being said, I came up with a different strategy. I’ll cook the ground onion and eggs separately. The ground onion will later be mixed with rice directly to ensure the flavor distribution is maximized. The egg will be scrambled in a non-stick pan, followed by frying my smoked beef and tofu. Later, they all will be mixed along with the sauces and seasonings.

The cooking period begins! I prepare two cooking stations: one non-stick pan and one wok. The non-stick pan is for scrambled eggs and smoked beef, whereas the wok is for frying my tofu and fried rice. I started with cooking the smoked beef. Then I fried my scrambled egg, which I had already beaten using seasoning beforehand. After that, the tofu went in. I cut my tofu into cubes to make sure it eases the fried rice mixing. After cooking for a while, the toppings are done and it’s time to prepare for the main quest.

I brought my rice from the freezer, then put a small amount of oil in my wok and roasted the ground onion. I made sure that the fire was small so that it wouldn’t burn. After a minute, I could see that my onion’s color turned brown, and it smelled good. That means it’s time for the main actor, the rice, to go in.

The rice that I froze earlier showed significant improvement. It’s less fluffy than it used to be, and it’s easier to separate while cooking. I stirred the rice to make sure it was well mixed with the roasted onion while continuously breaking the clumps. After it was well mixed, I put the toppings and seasonings in: sweet soy sauce, chili sauce, a bit of oyster sauce, mushroom granules, and a grain of salt. Stir them up for a bit and voila! The fried rice is ready to serve!

I moved my fried rice to my plate and sat at the dining table. I took my first spoonful as my moment of truth and found out these things:

1. My fried rice lacks seasoning. It was kind of flat, sadly. I was well aware that I should taste it before, but I was too lazy and wanted to know what would happen if I just trusted my instincts. I should be aware that I’m no chef, so I should play by the rules first.
2. Cooking is pretty similar to coding: get the ingredients right, get the steps right, and get things done with limited resources. Imagine if I put the wrong steps, for example, put the rice in before my ground onion. It would taste horrible. Not even cockroaches would dare to touch my food (nah, it’s an exaggeration; I bet they would).

The good news is, even though it lacks seasoning, it’s still pretty good. The combination of tofu, scrambled eggs, and smoked beef helps to give more taste to the food. My experiment of mixing the ground onion directly with the rice was also a success. It gives the rice the desired flavor even though it’s not for everyone because I think it gives a stronger smell of onion.

Overall, it was enjoyable. I would be happy if I could get good at cooking. 🙂