In the same way we love perfectly crispy breakfast potatoes and irresistible buttery bread on a tuna melt with extra crunch, extra-crispy fried rice is a dish Americans come back for time and time again, a dish that’s highly desirable – even by the bucketful! Though it’s a relatively simple dish, ideal for using up leftover rice, vegetables, and proteins, using too much sauce is a common cooking mistake that’ll prevent you from making a pan of extra-crispy fried rice.
Although we love to lay on the sauce, using too much is one of the quickest ways to mushy fried rice. If you want it to be crispy, excess moisture is your enemy. Using too much sauce is just as detrimental as using fresh rice; both will result in something that might taste good, but is sorely lacking in that crispy, crunchy texture that makes fried rice so desirable. So use cold, leftover rice and lay off the sauce!
Sauce wisely
While there’s much joy to be had when discovering an extra packet of sauce in your take-away, more isn’t always better, and this is especially true while preparing crispy fried rice. Feel free to dump on the sauce afterwards, but try to restrain yourself during the cooking process and you’ll be richly rewarded with fried rice that has both the flavor and texture you seek.
Get your rice nice and crispy, adding only a tablespoon of ingredients such as soy sauce, gochujang, sesame oil, fish sauce, or mirin, a key ingredient in restaurant-style fried rice. It’s also important to sauté each ingredient separately, a technique that cooks off extra moisture in fresh veggies like onions, bok choy, spinach, or even kimchi. Before you know it, you’ll be making the best fried rice you’ve ever eaten.
