Revision 2
See here for part 1
As the other half is working today, I decided to have another go at egg fried rice. There was only one problem, I hadn’t yet cooked any rice! Eek!!! The time was about 08:30 and I was taking her to work at about 10:00. An hour and a half. Did I have time, I wondered?
Let’s do it, I decided. It turned out we only had exactly one cup of long grain rice in the house. Perfect as I like to know my ratio’s when it comes to cooking. I’m a volumetric kind of guy, rather than a weigher. If I could determine how much MSG was needed for one cup of rice, well, two cups of rice is simply double.
My normal method for cooking rice is to rinse throughly, drain, let fully dry. Then, to fry in a bit of sunflower oil for a couple of minutes before adding the water and bringing to the boil. Today, I didn’t have time to let it fully dry but it didn’t turn out to be a problem. After the rice had cooked (full absorption method), I spread it out on a baking paper lined baking tray:
Twenty minutes later, it’d cooled enough to put in the fridge. I left it cooling for a couple of hours.
I had intended to buy a superior dark soy sauce as the normal ones are a bit thin. ASDA only had Lee Kum Lee Premium Dark soy Sauce, so I bought a bottle of that.
In part 1, I suspected that I hadn’t used enough MSG and had planned to use more. But now I thought that would be silly, far better to add a little, and only add more if tasting required it. I measured a 1/4 tsp and left it near the cooker.
The recipe below is nearly the same as part 1
Egg Fried Rice Recipe (Revision 2)
Serves one
1. Whisk up a large egg, with a pinch of black pepper, white pepper, salt
2. Chop up a bit of spring onion. Sometimes called green onion
3. Heat wok on maximum temperature until starts to smoke
4. Add about a tbsp of sunflower oil
5. Wait for it to smoke
6. Add the egg, and let cook. Should take less than 1 minute
7. Add some frozen peas that you took out of freezer about 15 minutes before
8. Cook for about another minute, stirring a lot
9. Add the rice (about 1 cup) and about a teaspoon of sesame oil
10. Add a dash of dark soy sauce and stir in. Add another dash if needed
11. Cook for about 30 seconds
12. Add about 1/8 tsp of MSG, trying to distribute evenly
13. Add about 1/8 tsp sugar and the spring onion along with a dash of light soy sauce. Taste and add a pinch more MSG or sugar if required
14. Cook for about another minute or two, stirring frequently
15. When the rice is bouncing around, flying out of the wok, it’s ready!
The Taste Test
Definitely better than part 1. The elusive takeaway flavour is unmistakeable and is 100% due to the MSG and sugar combination. You need both, MSG alone won’t do it nor will sugar alone. Yes, I have tried so don’t waste your time!
This is going to sound strange, but revision 2 reminded me of when you re-wok a takeaway bought egg fried rice the day after! I quite often do that and it has a slightly different taste to eating when first cooked. I like the day after taste.
Part 2 Conclusion
I think the better quality dark soy sauce definitely helped. I also think trying to distribute the MSG more evenly also helped.
I now suspect that most UK takeaways use a combination of sugar and MSG to get that characteristic flavour.
The plan for part 3 is to add a bit more soy sauce, a bit more sugar, and a bit more MSG. To be quite honest, revision 2 is certainly good enough but as I’m nearly there, I might as well keep going…
