Seitan Fried Rice With Egg-Drop Soup.

True confession time: For as long as I’ve been cooking, I’ve been a fried-rice failure.  No matter what recipe I’ve used, no matter how many techniques I’ve tried, fried rice and I have never gotten along.  Which is a shame, because I love fried rice.  It’s one of my go-tos at Asian restaurants and one of the few dishes I’ve attempted multiple times that has continued to elude me.

So I wasn’t expecting much when I gave it another whirl after reading a recipe by Christy Jordan in her Southern Plate Classics magazine.  Why not, I thought.  For old time’s sake.  And let’s even try something new – egg-drop soup – and see whether that will salvage the rice if it turns south on me.

Imagine my surprise when, after following the instructions to (almost) the letter, (albeit substituting seitan for the chicken that Christy calls for), the fried rice turned out just as good as what I’d find in a restaurant!  There may have been some hooting and hollering going on at my kitchen table last night.  And it may have been coming from me.  I can’t confirm or deny.

The recipe is totally easy – given my history with poorly cooked fried rice, if I can do it, surely anyone else can.  I cooked some brown instant rice in the microwave and scrambled some eggs to set aside for the end.  While the rice finished up, I sautéed some seitan and garlic powder in my frying pan that looks most like a wok (though decidedly is not), threw in the rice, some frozen peas, and a couple of tablespoons of sesame oil, and let those all heat through.  At the end of the cooking process, I turned off the heat and added some fresh shredded carrots, green onions, and the scrambled egg, along with a dash of soy sauce.  We both ended up adding a little extra soy sauce at the dinner table, but other than that, the seasoning worked great!  Not too oily, not too dry.  Certainly not bland.  Nor burned.

Success!

Meanwhile, I learned how to concoct egg-drop soup, which I realize now is perhaps one of the easiest soups ever to make.  I poured a carton of vegetable broth into my soup pot, added some ginger and garlic powder, and set the mixture to a boil.  Once it was bubbling, I reduced the heat and added in two eggs, beating lightly as I went.  They were cooked in just a minute – though I let them go a little too long on account of preparing the fried rice! – and I topped the soup off with some green onions and called it finished.

Paired together, this was a fantastic meal!  LeeLee and I both loved it, and I’ll certainly make it again.  Especially that fried rice.  Can lightning strike twice?  Maybe I’ve got a future in Asian cooking after all.

:)