Destination Flavour China: Episode 3

Yang Zhou Fried Rice

A dish loved by many, Adam Liaw shows how to cook the simple but delicious Yangzhou fried rice.

Transcription

Someone once told me that the secret to a great Yangzhou Fried Rice, starts with finding a good chicken. But the chickens used to make stock. And I've used that stock to make this rice last night. I've also got some other ingredients here, some bamboo shoot, some ham, chicken gizzard, river prawns and peas. Some carrot, some spring onion and some mushrooms. There's no fixed recipe for Yangzhou Fried Rice. The thing that ties all the different ingredients together however is that they all need to be cut to the exact same size. After all of that's done. Now there are two methods to making Yangzhou Fried Rice. Gold over silver, is where you pour the egg over the cooking rice in the wok. And silver over gold, is when you pour the rice over the egg. Both of them result in a beautiful yellow rice that's coated in little pieces of egg.

The process of actually cooking the rice is very, very simple. These ingredients chosen for their texture and color are fried first, just to bring out their unique properties. And in with a bit more oil the egg goes into the oil, gets whipped around into its little pieces. Then after that the rice goes in. It's so important to use day old rice or slightly dry rice for this because of this motion, that sort of flattening with the back of this shão to really spread the rice grains out and separate them. The ingredients go back in and it all gets tossed together. That's the silver over gold method. All it really needs to be seasoned with is a touch of salt, those spring onions, give it a bit of a toss. And it's Yangzhou Fried Rice. Just a little bit of deep fried dried scallop on top, and it might be the most popular Chinese dish in the entire world.