Recipe: Healthy Fried Rice for Chinese New Year

Sneaking vegetables into your fried rice for flavor and health

Fried rice has always been one of my favorite dishes and kids seem to love it as well. It is really easy to sneak a lot of vegetables into fried rice, as the vegetables add flavor layers to the dish. Your husband, kids or picky spouse will not suspect that you are lacing their meal with nutrients. This recipe for Healthy Fried Rice is a vegetarian dish and is a healthy option for your Chinese New Year celebration.

Ingredient Highlight

Gai Lan which is also known as Chinese Kale or Chinese Broccoli. This is the same stuff that is served sauteed with oyster sauce at Dim Sum.  It is a leafy vegetable with thick, flat, glossy blue-green leaves with thick stems and a small number of tiny flower heads, like mini- broccoli. The flavor is slightly bitter. Gai Lan is high in fiber, Vitamin A and C.

Chinese Long Beans – This is a long and slender bean with a crunchy exterior and small beans. Long beans are versatile due to the long shape, so they can be cut up into small bite size pieces or long segments. These beans are high in vitamin C.

Recipe for Healthier Fried Rice

Serves two People as a large main course or six people as a side

Estimated Calories: Main Course: 450 Calories Side: 150

Ingredients

• 1/8 cup sliced fresh ginger (thin sliced and quartered)
• 1/2 cup Melissa’s Produce daikon (sliced and divided 
• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1/4 Cup brown onion (chopped)
• 1/2 Cup Melissa’s Produce Chinese Long Beans (cut into 1 inch segments)
• 1 Cup brown mushrooms (sliced)
• 1 Tablespoon fresh ginger (minced)
• 1 Tablespoon fresh garlic (minced)
• 1 Bunch Melissa’s Produce Gai Lan 
  • Stems:  sliced in half and cut into one inch segments
  • Leaves: sliced into one-two inch segments. 

• 1 Tablespoon Low Sodium Kikoman soy sauce 
• 1 Tablespoon fish sauce
• 1 Tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 Tablespoon siracha
• 1 Melissa’s Produce key lime-  quartered , divided

• 2 Cups brown rice (cooked)
• 2 Large eggs

Instructions

Pre-step – Pickle ginger and daicon

-Place thinly sliced ginger on bottom of small bowl

-Add Apple cider vinegar, enough to slightly cover ginger

-Place thinly sliced daikon on top of ginger

-Allow the ginger and daikon to slightly pickle as you prep the rest of the dish. Set aside, these pickled ingredients will provide flavor layering to the dish. 

 

Healthy Fried Rice Steps

1) Warm olive oil in large pan over medium-high heat

2) Add Gai Lan stems, Chinese long beans and onion to the hot pan. Season with salt and pepper (to taste).

3) When onion begin to sweat, add the mushrooms, gai lan leaves, non-pickled daikon and minced ginger

 

Step 4) While the vegetables cook, mix the soy sauce, fish sauce, brown sugar, rooster sauce and fresh squeezed lime juice in a separate bowl.

Step 5) When the Gain Lan leaves  begin to wilt, add sauce and mix all ingredients well. 

Step 6) Drain the pickling bowl and add pickled ginger and daikon to the pan.

Step 7) Add brown rice, and thoroughly integrate ingredients.

 

Step 8) Allow the brown rice to get  very hot. If rice begins to stick to the bottom of the pan, add an additional tablespoon of olive oil. A little stickiness and browning is o.k.

Step 9) Crack one full egg and whites of one egg on top of rice. Slowly spread egg around rice and then fold the egg into the rice.

Step 10) Allow the rice to continue to cook and eggs to firm up. 

 

 

Serve the Healthy Fried Rice with green onion and quarter slice of lime.

 

Happy New Years to my fans. May the Year of the Horse be prosperous and healthy for you and your family. If you liked this dish or have ideas to improve it, leave a comment below.

 

View my other Recipe Posts

Korea Asada

Baked Goat Cheese on Green Apples

Alternate methods to cook a Turkey

Guinness Stew

Perfect Pie Crust with Vodka

Other Food Posts

Battle of Las Vegas Buffets – Wicked Spoon versus Bachhanal

Vine Restaurant in San Clemente

Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill 

BevMo Five Cent Wine Sale Picks