[Sca-cooks] Fried Rice, was Chinese sausage

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Christine Seelye-King:
>	Ok, I'm going out on a limb here and stating that my source
>for this is the
>"Iron Chef", wherein one episode the challenger was from some restaurant
>that has been in business for decades, sorry, I remember neither the chef or
>the restaurant's name.  They, however, claimed to be the place that First
>Invented Fried Rice (TM), or at least the version we all know and love
>today.

People make all sorts of interesting claims.

>   It was their vaulted opinion that the real secret to fried rice that
>is most often overlooked today, is to take the yolk of an egg and mix it
>into the cooked but not fried rice, blending it thoroughly into the rice
>before putting it to the frying pan.  They stated that this method coated
>each grain of rice with the oil and protein combination from the yolk,
>making perfect, fluffy fried rice.

Well, it works for kasha, but I suspect it's not necessary. The egg
is nice to lighten the texture of the mixture, but I wouldn't bother
with it as described above. With more or less one exception, fried
rice is a leftover dish (Yangchow fried rice being something of  an
exception, and commonly served at banquets, which tend not to be
rice-intensive meals, otherwise). It's kind of like making hash out
of filet mignon. Hey, I _like_ good hash, but it's not necessary and
most people can't tell the difference.

>	As for the rest of your instructions, they are right on (in
>my experience
>and according to those who purport to know), and I have made the mistake of
>making gummy porridge on more than one occasion before figuring it out.

I never could figure it out, just going by recipes, but I'd never run
across one with those specific instructions. They just say to fry it.
For years I could not produce fried rice any better than my mother's
(she of Irish/German extraction), and the shame was indescribable
;-). Finally I had the opportunity to carefully watch it being done
in a tiny hole-in-the-wall Burmese takeout place in my neighborhood
(since closed, on a black, black day), and realized that it was
called fried rice was because it was _fried_ ;-), by which I mean
that the actual cooking process is a major contributor to the flavor
and texture.

Otherwise you have gummy porridge!

Adamantius