Adventures in Cooking: Fried Rice

Yesterday, I decided to continue my self-taught* cooking education by trying to make fried rice, the variety filled with tasty little bits of meat, veggies and egg. I found a recipe online and followed the basic instructions. About 45 minutes later, my rice was ready to eat.

To make it, I first cooked some rice (supposedly fried rice is usually made to use up left over rice but I didn't have any). When it was done, I dumped it into my wok along with a tablespoon or two of canola oil and started stirring it around. Then I poured in some soy sauce and continued stirring. Next I added some finely frozen veggies: corn, peas and small cubed carrots. Finally, I squished all my rice up around the edges of the pan and scrambled a couple eggs in the middle. When the eggs were done I mixed them into the rice. Viola! Dinner.

My rice turned out so well that I decided to make some more this evening. Unfortunately, I encountered more trouble my second go round.

Since the first batch came out wonderfully I decided to make a much larger batch this time so that I could have some for lunch tomorrow. I started to make several cups of rice but I forget it on the stove and ended up burning it badly. For those of you new to the world of cooking, it's generally a bad sign when your are reminded of a forgotten cooking project by your olfactory sense.

I had to throw the whole pot away and start over, this time having to scrub hard-burned rice off the bottom of the pot before beginning.

I decided to continue with my plans to make a large pot despite my initial error. Fortunately the second batch came out perfectly and now I can happily report a full stomach and tupperware filled with tomorrow's lunch.

*In reality I am only somewhat self-taught, I often get cooking advice from my parents via Skype before trying a new recipe. In this instance however, the internet was my only teacher.