When you have any leftover rice, it's a perfect time to make fried rice like my Vegan Garlic Fried Rice which is inspired by my mom's cooking that I ate a million times. It's super quick to make but you won't believe how flavorful the garlic fried rice is with the key ingredient --- garlic chips! This comforting and heart-warming dish brings me back to my childhood!*The recipe requires day-old leftover rice!
Prep Time5 minutesmins
Cook Time14 minutesmins
Total Time20 minutesmins
Course: Main
Cuisine: Japanese
Servings: 2
Author: Plant-Based Matters
Ingredients
1tbspneutral oilplus more for separating rice grains
1/2tbspunsalted vegan butter
3clovesgarlicthinly sliced
1/2cupdiced yellow onion
1scallionfinely chopped and separate green and white
3shiitake mushroomstrim off the end of the stem and thinly sliced
Pour neutral oil and garlic slices in a non-stick frying pan. Turn on the stove at medium heat and slowly cook the garlic until golden brown and crispy. Remove the garlic chips from the oil (leave the oil in the pan) and set it aside.
Turn up the heat to medium high. Use the same pan and add vegan butter. Once the butter is melted, add yellow onion and white part of scallion. Cook for 2-3 minutes until onions are translucent. Add shiitake mushrooms and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Once shiitake has shrunk down, add a tiny pinch of sea salt and give a quick stir.
Next, separate lumps of cold rice as much as possible then add to the pan. Mix and cook for 2-3 minutes until the rice is reheated and mixed thoroughly. Adjust the heat as necessary to avoid burning too quickly.
Season with salt and taste it. Make sure that it is not too salty before adding soy sauce. Next, add soy sauce and white pepper then give a quick stir. Lastly, add green part of scallions and some of the garlic chips back to the pan and stir.
Serve immediately with the remainder of garlic chips on top. Use kizami nori on top as an optional topping.
Notes
Garlic
What separates this garlic fried rice (inspired by my mom’s garlic fried rice) from other garlic fried rice recipes is the use of SLICED GARLIC to make GARLIC CHIPS!
To extract the full flavor from the garlic, start cooking garlic slices with cold oil in a pan. Then turn on the heat at medium to slowly cook until they become crispy. In this method, you don’t burn the garlic and also, you can transfer the aroma of garlic to the oil as well.
Choice of Rice
For the authentic taste, use Japanese short grain rice.
Day-old cold rice is the best for making good fried rice! Freshly made rice isn’t recommended (it’ll be mushy and wet.)
It’s important to separate the grains with a rice paddle (or a fork) before adding to the pan and/or during cooking.
Cooking Tips
I use both neutral oil and vegan butter. Vegan butter adds a little more depth to the flavor (my mom would also use butter, too)
This is one of those recipes that the measurement doesn’t have to be super precise. If you have a little more/less rice, garlic etc., no problem! It may not taste the same as mine but it should work!
As mentioned in “Choice of Rice”, be sure to use day-old cold rice for making great fried rice. Nothing is worse than wet fried rice…
Kizami Nori (optional)
Kizami nori is Japanese shredded nori.
If you don’t have kizami nori, you can shred sushi nori seaweed with kitchen scissors.