P.F. Chang's Chicken Fried Rice

Home reconstruction

"Use day-old rice" appears in every fried rice recipe and is rarely explained, which makes it sound like folklore. It is not.

Freshly cooked rice grains are full of swollen, hydrated starch. Put them in a hot pan and they release moisture and stick together, and the constant tossing smears them into paste.

Refrigerated overnight, the starch retrogrades — the molecules re-crystallise and push water out. The grains firm up, the surface dries, and they stay separate in the pan. That is the entire mechanism.

If you have no day-old rice

Cook it, spread it thinly on a tray, and put it in the fridge uncovered for an hour. It is not as good as overnight but it is far better than straight from the pan.

What does not work is rinsing hot rice in cold water. It cools it and adds moisture, which is the wrong half of the problem.

Cook the egg separately and take it out

Eggs scrambled into the rice coat every grain in a thin film. That sounds appealing and gives you rice that tastes uniformly of egg with no distinct pieces.

Scramble them alone, remove them, and fold them back in at the end. You get recognisable ribbons of egg, which is what the restaurant version has.

The pan has to be genuinely hot

Fried rice is a high-heat dish and a domestic hob is the limiting factor.

Two things help. Cook in two batches rather than one, so the pan does not drop. And use the widest pan you own — a wok on a domestic ring only heats at the very bottom, and a flat-bottomed frying pan often works better.

What you need

• 700 g cooked long-grain rice, cold from the fridge
• 300 g chicken thighs, in small pieces
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 1 onion, diced
• 150 g frozen peas and carrots
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 tbsp neutral oil
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tsp toasted sesame oil
• 1/2 tsp white pepper
• 3 spring onions, sliced

Method

1. 1. Break the cold rice up with your hands before it goes near the pan. Clumps never separate once they are hot.
2. 2. Hot pan, 1 tbsp oil. Scramble the eggs, remove them, and set aside.
3. 3. Another tbsp oil. Chicken in a single layer, 2 minutes undisturbed, then toss until cooked. Remove.
4. 4. Last tbsp oil. Onion 2 minutes, garlic 30 seconds, peas and carrots 1 minute.
5. 5. Rice in. Press it flat against the pan and leave it 1 minute before tossing. Repeat twice — this is where the toasted flavour comes from.
6. 6. Return the chicken and egg.
7. 7. Soy, oyster sauce, sesame oil and white pepper. Toss for 30 seconds.
8. 8. Spring onions off the heat.

Press the rice flat and leave it

Constant tossing keeps the rice moving and nothing ever browns. Pressing it against the hot pan and leaving it a minute gives you the slightly toasted grains that are most of what makes restaurant fried rice taste different.

Three rounds of press-and-leave beats three minutes of stirring.

Sauce at the end, and not much of it

Three tablespoons of soy for 700 g of rice looks like too little. It is right.

Soy is mostly water — add it early or add too much and the rice absorbs it and softens, which undoes everything the day-old rice was for.

Storing

Three days in the fridge. Cool and refrigerate within an hour; cooked rice left at room temperature is a real food safety risk, and reheated fried rice is a common cause of food poisoning for exactly that reason.

Reheat once, until piping hot.