Recipe: “Chinese Meatloaf” (better known as Fried Rice)

D likes to tell people about my Chinese Meatloaf though I try to remind him that no one else knows what that means. It’s my own personal name for fried rice because my recipe for it really just depends on what’s in the fridge and pantry. Whatever that ends up being simply gets mixed in with the staple fried rice ingredients and voilà, there’s dinner.

It’s actually my core style of cooking—“meatloaf style“—that is. It can be used for stir fry, chow mein, omelets, and even spaghetti sauce. There could almost be a cookbook for it; however, that would be completely contrary to the point.

The must-have staple ingredients for fried rice are soy sauce, oyster sauce and eggs. My personal favorite add ins are chili oil, sesame oil, and preferably Chinese sausage (however, I sadly didn’t have any at this time).

Regarding the picture on the left, only the oyster sauce and chili oil brands  (last two items on the right) are ones that I stick to. I’m not so picky about the sesame oil and soy sauce mostly because I can’t read the Chinese characters to know the product names and no particular label stands out in my memory from my mom’s cabinets.

The most important staple ingredient for fried rice is day-old long grain rice. What I typically do is make extra rice (at least 2 extra cups of dry rice) when I’m cooking it for another reason. Then I can just pop the extra in the frig with the plan to have fried rice the next day. While you can use freshly-made rice (which I’m attempting to do this morning because of poor planning), there’s typically too much moisture in it that makes it clump and not mix well when fried with the other ingredients. You can also use a medium grain (such as Calrose); however, that’s a stickier type of rice that may be too different than what you’re used to.

As for the variable ingredients, I like to add a protein (typically the Chinese sausage) and veggies. In proper form, I checked the frig to see what I had. In the best example of meatloaf style, this time it happened to be emptier than normal so I had to turn to the pantry and the freezer.

What I found were two kinds of frozen vegetables, frozen shrimp, a zucchini, and a greens mix. I’m realizing that as a recipe, I really should have suggested amounts of ingredients. I guess I’ll have to pilfer someone else’s recipe for that. I’ll make up the guideline right now that the meatloaf style of cooking includes a lot of “just eyeballing it.” If I had to say, I would say my general guidelines on proportion should be related to the rice: protein about 1/4 the amount of the amount of rice you have and veggies about 1/2.

 Then heat, stir and enjoy! It’s really pretty easy. If I can do it, any one can.