Salted egg fried rice can be simple or fancy. I’m not a fancy kind of girl. I like delicious minus the fluff and over-the-top plating. As my daughter, Alex, put it so well just a few nights ago: We cook delicious but not necessarily pretty.
It is the best home cooking philosophy, no doubt. Food, after all, is meant to be eaten. The only role of the eyes is to make sure that the food gets plopped into the mouth and not elsewhere. But in the age of Pinterest, I wonder — are people content to just eat with their eyes? Go to Pinterest and look at the food photos. The way the food is laid out on a plate, it often looks like every component had been carefully positioned with tweezers. Pretty? Maybe. But definitely unnatural.
Has unnatural become the norm? Perhaps — just look at the cosmetically enhanced faces and bodies of celebrities that the public adores. A number of them look so far from their natural selves that they’re hardly recognizable.
But unnatural-looking plated food? Is that the norm too? I don’t know. And I don’t care. We don’t do unnatural at home. We just do delicious and this salted egg fried rice, as simple as it is to make, is so deliciously complex in flavors. And for an umami touch, I topped it with furikake. Amazing!
I did say that it is simple to cook this dish, right? Let me prove it.
First, slice the scallions. Then, crack a salted egg open.
Separate the egg white from the yolk. Chop the egg white; mash the yolk with a fork.
Heat the oil in a frying pan. Saute minced garlic until aromatic. Add the rice and stir fry until heated through.
Add the chopped egg white and scallions. Toss.
Throw in the mashed egg yolk and toss again.
Spoon the salted egg fried rice on a plate and top with furikake. That’s it!
Ingredients
- 1 salted duck egg
- 1 tablespoon sliced scallions
- 1 tablespoon cooking oil
- 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
- 1 cup cold cooked rice
- furikake (optional)
Instructions
- Crack the shell of the salted duck egg and carefully separate the egg white from the yolk.
- Using a knife, chop up the egg white. How rough or fine the chop depends on what you prefer.
- Mash the yolk with a fork. Lightly or thoroughly, that's up to you.
- Heat the cooking oil in a frying pan. Add the garlic and cook over medium heat until golden.
- Add the rice and stir fry until the rice is heated through.
- Add the chopped salted egg white and sliced scallions. Stir to distribute well.
- Add the mashed salted egg yolk and stir to blend.
- No salt? If you follow the one cup of rice with one salted egg proportion, no, there is no need to add salt. But if you use more rice with one salted egg, you will need to add salt. Taste the salted egg fried rice when it's done. Add salt or not depending on what your taste buds tell you.
- Sprinkle the rice with furikake, if you like.
If you cooked this dish (or made this drink) and you want to share your masterpiece, please use your own photos and write the cooking steps in your own words.
If meatless isn’t your game, enjoy your salted fried rice with meat. Speedy loves SPAM, so his salted egg fried rice was served with slices of SPAM.