Healthy brown fried rice

Fried rice doesn’t have to be bad for you.  Not when you use brown rice and only a tiny amount of oil.

Try this healthy, steam oven version whereby you can cook all your extra ingredients whilst the rice is cooking.  If you have a steam oven that doesn’t allow for multi-level cooking then you can just throw everything in directly on top of the rice!  Sounds amazing but it won’t hurt.  This will just give the rice a little more flavour.

Try to think like this when using your steam oven.  For a start you don’t want to wash up heaps and heaps of dishes so try to minimise these by testing just how much you can pile into one steamer tray.

For example the rice takes 40 minutes so you have lots of time to add and remove different items.  For my fried rice tonight I am going to add corn on the cob, sliced beans & frozen peas – 5 minutes.  You could also try adding a chicken breast fillet to the rice (see timing here on Tips & Tricks but reduce the time a little as your cooking at 100°C).  Beans usually take only 2 minutes but it didn’t overcook them on this occasion.

Experiment – that is what cooking in a new appliance is all about 🙂

Ingredients:

1½ cups brown rice
1¾ cups water
pinch salt

1-2 corn on the cob, halved
4 spring onions, sliced diagonally
1 teaspoon grated ginger
2 cloves crushed garlic
2 eggs beaten
Large handful of bean sprouts soaked in ice water
½ red capsicum, diced
Sliced cooked chicken, green prawns, bacon slices, chopped, ham, Char Siu pork chopped, Chinese sausage sliced, BBQ Chinese duck or roast pork, shredded
½ cup frozen peas
chopped coriander & chilli (optional)
splash of soy sauce to taste

Method:

1. Wash rice and place into the solid steamer tray with the water and a pinch of salt.
2. Set the timer for 40 minutes @ 100°C
3. While this is cooking chop all your other vegetables
4. Heat a large wok on high and add 1 teaspoon of peanut oil.  Pour in your 2 eggs that you have beaten and swirl around to make a thin, crisp omelette.  Turn to cook the other side then fold over and remove to cool.   Slice.
5. When you have 5 minutes cooking time remaining on the timer, put in your vegetables or chicken as above.
6. Remove everything from the steam oven and set aside to cool.
7. Heat your wok again with a little more oil (just a teaspoon is plenty) and sauté  the white part of the spring onion with the ginger, garlic and capsicum until soft.  If you are using bacon or prawns add it here too.
8. Add all your other ingredients and stir well.
9. Season to taste with soy sauce and cover.  Lower the heat and cook 5 minutes to reheat all your ingredients and blend the flavours.

Pile into warm bowls and top with some coriander leaves to serve.  Delicious, a perfect way to use up that left over chicken, ham or whatever you have in the fridge.