Cook: Spam Fried Rice
Fried rice is the epitome of ugly delicious food (a brilliant term coined by none other than David Chang). If you haven’t watched his Netflix show, I highly suggest it. It combines everything I love about food into an eye-opening, binge-worthy show. Pro tip: don’t watch while hungry.
To make the best fried rice, use 1-2 day old rice. Fresh rice out of the pot is too sticky and soft in my opinion. Every Asian culture has a version of fried rice and with that in mind, there’s no right or wrong way to make it. Here are my tips:
Use butter as your base, but if you want the best fried rice, squirt in some Kewpie mayo. If people don’t like mayo just don’t tell them you put it in there (they’ll never know). I’m kidding, but not really.
After you add the butter, chop up your spam and get it nice and brown in the pan by cooking over medium heat. This is also the time to add your Asian mirepoix which is carrots, onions, ginger and garlic (ok, that’s more like a hapa mirepoix) but it works. Try using shoyu hot dogs if you don’t have spam laying around!
Add in that day old rice and stir, stir, stir. At this point, I would add in some frozen peas (because there always seem to be lingering in the freezer), spices of your choice (I would go togarashi and furikake) and some shoyu for flavor and color.
Taste test as necessary and served with an egg that was fried in sesame oil. And, because I love ginger, I usually top it with the red shoga or any type of pickled condiments that are in my fridge.
