How to make egg-fried rice

Egg-fried rice is a much-loved and oft-ordered Chinese takeaway classic. It seems simple enough to make, but it's easy to end up with a sticky mess in the bottom of your wok if you don't know what you're doing!

The most important thing to remember is to use pre-cooked rice that has been chilled in the fridge overnight. Using freshly-cooked rice is a surefire way to end up with a gluey result – the extra moisture content will cause everything to stick together. If you leave your rice in the fridge, not only will it be nicely chilled when it goes in, it'll be much drier, giving you lovely separate rice grains. In fact, if you're making some rice for a dish, think about cooking extra and then just keeping it in the fridge for fried rice the next day.

Once you've got your rice ready to go, two more things to remember: get your wok smoking hot before you fry the rice, and don't overcrowd the wok. You want to keep as much heat in the wok as possible so get the temperature up as high as possible, then fry your rice in batches if necessary – adding too much rice to the wok at once will remove all the heat from the pan.

Feeling inspired? Check out our video above, and have a go yourself!

Ingredients

Shopping List

Method

Heat a non-stick wok over a high heat until smoking

Mix the oil with the rice until it is evenly coated

Once the wok is smoking hot, add the rice and stir-fry for 2-3 minutes. Make sure to break up any clumps of rice into individual grains and coat everything in the oil

Push the rice to one side of the wok and add the eggs, stirring with a spatula to scramble

Fold the egg through the rice and add the peas and spring onions, mixing until until fully combined

Finish with a good splash of soy sauce, adjusting to taste

Variations

You can really add any vegetable you have in the fridge to the fried rice; peas, carrots and bean sprouts all work well, as do prawns and chopped ham for a bit of extra protein.

Shu Han Lee has a few excellent fried rice suggestions above too, including an umami-laden kimchi fried rice and a delicious Malaysian nasi goreng.