Mastering Fried Rice

My book, "The Way of the Man's Fried Rice," is a record of my trial and error as an amateur trying to figure out if I could make delicious, "fluffy and loose" fried rice at home, just like in a restaurant.

Many people find it impossible to get that loose texture. I decided to give it my best shot from the perspective of an ordinary amateur. First of all, I think the biggest charm of fried rice is that it looks easy at first glance. Almost everyone has probably made it at least once.

That's true.

You can pretty much make it just by stir-frying leftover rice from the fridge. And when you actually try making it, it's fun. Because the process is so simple, even small differences are reflected in the taste. And yet, it's so hard to get it fluffy (laughs).

Even if you try to mimic a Chinese chef at home, it rarely works out. This sense of "how do I do this?" is what stimulates creativity.

We often call high-end restaurants "Chugoku-ryori-ten" (Chinese cuisine restaurants) and local ramen shops "Chuka-ryori-ya" (Chinese food shops), but one thing they both always have is fried rice.

The challenge for a high-end restaurant is how much they can differentiate their fried rice from the local shop's version. Since it's so easy to judge by eating, I think it's a dish that shouldn't be underestimated.

When I teach my staff, I have them make fried rice as their own staff meal before they serve it to customers. Even if they follow the same steps, the result is completely different depending on the cooking time or how they mix the eggs. As Mr. Tsuchiya said, it looks simple, but it's actually a very difficult and deep dish. And many customers absolutely love it.

There's hardly anyone who dislikes fried rice, is there?

Hardly anyone. It's delicious with just eggs and rice, and you can add all sorts of ingredients. If you go toward Sichuan Province, they even have Twice-Cooked Pork flavored fried rice. You can eat it casually at a golf course, or at a high-end restaurant where it's still relatively affordable—it's a dish within everyone's reach.

At the same time, it's a dish where the balance between the stir-frying technique and the quality of the rice really shows through.

Because it's so simple, the differences become clear, and there's a certain joy in everyone finding their own obsession with the details.

I've been going to China almost every year for about 30 years. Japanese people tend to think, "Imagine how delicious fried rice must be in its birthplace!" But when you actually eat it there, it's surprisingly unremarkable.

In China, fried rice is a leftover dish made with cold rice; it's never the star of the menu. Consequently, there doesn't seem to be much passion put into making it, and you don't feel the same level of emotional attachment that Japanese people have. This is true even in high-end restaurants.

Japanese people relatively often order fried rice to finish off a course meal, but people over there usually have noodle soup or just plain white rice instead. They don't have much of a fixation on fried rice.

I think the fried rice we eat in Japan is a dish that Japanese people took from China and improved to suit their own tastes—it's essentially a type of Japanese cuisine, and it's very delicious.

Over there, they seem to prefer eating rice topped with a starchy sauce or side dishes rather than fried rice itself.

There isn't really an image of ordering fried rice at a restaurant in China, is there?

In Japan, a ramen shop always has gyoza, ramen, and fried rice. People commonly eat fried rice on its own, or in a set with ramen or gyoza. I think this way of eating is a characteristic unique to the Japanese.

In an essay by a Japanese person who went to China during the Meiji era, there's a mention of fried rice being incredibly good.

A Chinese woman employed as a maid was busy, so she chopped up some salted mustard greens and stir-fried them with rice for herself. The author wrote that when they tasted it, it was incredibly delicious. To a Japanese person at the time, it must have been a very novel dish.

It's actually quite recent that Japanese people started eating Chinese food. While it was liked by some gourmets in the Meiji era, it apparently became popular with the masses only after the Great Kanto Earthquake. And the style of eating a set of ramen and gyoza at a narrow food stall counter seems to have established itself from the shacks of the post-war black markets.

In novels from right after the war, "Shina-soba" (Chinese noodle) stalls often appear. I wonder if they were already serving fried rice back then.

Probably so, don't you think?

When I serve it to customers, I use beaten eggs, stir-fry them lightly and quickly, then add the rice. But when I make fried rice for myself, I absolutely never beat the yolks.

You just drop them in as they are?

Yes. If you mix them, the aroma of the egg disappears.

Ah, I see.

I believe the aroma of the egg is 100% in the white. I really love the smell of the whites being cooked. I love making fried rice for myself by letting just the whites bubble up and turn a little brown before adding the rice.

I totally understand. When you drop it into a hot pan and the back of the white turns brown, a light fragrance wafts up. When you add the rice, you think, "Ah, this was the smell of fried rice. The egg white plays such an important role."

When I watch videos of local fried rice shops on YouTube, many of them don't beat the eggs either. It might just be because it's easier as a workflow, though.

I have a childhood memory of a shop I used to go to where they would drop the egg straight in, let it bubble up, and then add the rice. In terms of aroma, I think the egg white is outstanding.

Has so-called "Golden Fried Rice" been around for a long time?

That's the "egg coating" method (mixing beaten egg with the rice before stir-frying). It seems the idea of coating it with egg didn't exist at all in the past. It appears to have emerged in the 90s or later.

Before that, home cooking recipes always involved putting the egg in first, taking it out, stir-frying the rice, and then mixing them back together. Even in the recipe book "The Ma Family's Famous Chinese Dishes" by three generations of Chinese people, the mother and daughter still take the egg out first. But the grandchild uses the egg coating method.

Mr. Komoda, in your book written for home cooks, "Kinya Komoda's Book on Becoming a Master of Chinese Cuisine" (2014), you also recommend egg coating. Also, Chef So Chomei, who was the chef at Kakyu in Kiyoken, trademarked the name "Golden Fried Rice."

He has passed away now.

In the fried rice he learned from his father, there was a method of mixing rice with egg and spiny lobster tomalley to make it golden before stir-frying, which seems to be quite popular in China. However, in China's case, it seems the main point is to make it golden rather than to make it fluffy and loose.

They do love gold (laughs).

Is the main purpose of making Golden Fried Rice in Japan to make it fluffy and loose?

I think so. It's likely a combination of trying to solve the inherent problem Japanese people have with sticky Japonica rice and the story that eggs are mixed in beforehand in China to add color, which resulted in Golden Fried Rice.

I think the condition of the rice is extremely important. The state of the rice before stir-frying determines the baseline starting line.

Actually, when I was writing this book, I tried many different rice varieties and cooking methods. I used to think that the skill of a Chinese restaurant was being able to make any rice delicious, but I was very surprised at how much the taste is influenced by the rice itself.

Originally, there was no habit of "boiling" rice in China; it's steamed rice. So it's quite difficult to take rice that has been boiled to be eaten as-is and turn it into fried rice.

Besides, the rice over there is quite dry to begin with. If you make it normally, it'll probably turn out fluffy and loose anyway (laughs).

The rice varieties are different. Indica rice has always been the mainstream in China. Chinese rice is rounder than Southeast Asian Indica rice and looks similar to Japanese rice, but it's still Indica rice. Even when cooked, it's not very sticky, so it's naturally loose.

So there's probably no reason for the egg coating other than coloring.

Exactly. Even so, Chinese people also seem to be obsessed with making fried rice fluffy and loose. They don't just steam it; they use the "yudori" method. That is, they steam it once, wash it with hot water halfway through, and then steam it again. Even though it's already so dry, I wonder if they want to make it even looser (laughs).

I also mistakenly thought Chinese rice was the same as Japanese because it's short, but it's apparently a medium-grain variety that is Indica but not long.

In the past, Japan had import restrictions on foreign rice. So Japanese people made fried rice with Japanese rice, but for the Japanese, that probably suited their palates better.

Japanese rice is far more delicious. But it takes technique to turn it into fluffy and loose fried rice.

That's the difficult part.

Yes. Once you overcome that, you end up with an incredibly delicious fried rice that surpasses what you find in China.

When I was a kid, if my mother said, "We're having fried rice today," I'd be disappointed (laughs). Looking back at how she made it, it was like she was pounding mochi.

She'd stir-fry the ingredients in the wok, then throw in clumps of cold rice and pound away. There would be these big chunks of white rice that weren't even warm.

And the rice has soaked up all the oil (laughs).

Exactly. But in my mother's generation, that was the only information they had.

I think it's very difficult to mix fried rice uniformly at home. Since it's not a liquid, when you add salt or pepper, you need the technique of tossing the pan to distribute it throughout.

When people think of fried rice, they first imagine "aori"—the motion of a chef tossing the pan vigorously. But if you toss the pan on a home stove, it moves away from the heat, which causes the rice to become strangely sticky.

So you're saying tossing is bad?

Yes. For professionals, the wok is placed over a high flame and the heat is distributed thoroughly, so if they don't toss it, the rice will burn in an instant. That's why they toss it.

It's actually to weaken the heat.

Right, it's heat adjustment. But if you just take that motion and do it at home, the rice will never get hot.

I see.

The cooking method changes depending on the heat source. At home, to use the heat to its maximum, it's better to cook without lifting the pan away from the flame.

The conclusion I finally reached was to use as wide a flat surface as possible with high heat, not touching the pan, but rather pressing the rice flat against it so it absorbs as much of the fire's power as possible.

I'm glad to hear that. If I had written 'shake the pan' in my book, Komoda-san would have told me, 'No, that's wrong' (laughs).

I saw a housewife doing this at a home where I went to teach: she was holding about four chopsticks to mix the rice.

Everyone usually uses a rice paddle, but it's hard to get the individual grains to separate. If you hold four chopsticks and just keep them in place while swirling them around, it's easier to make the rice fluffy and separate.

She taught me, 'This is how I usually do it.'

That's quite clever.

It's superior to a rice paddle when you want to keep the rice in contact with the frying pan surface and swap the parts that are cooked with the parts that aren't.

I see, if you use a rice paddle, the rice ends up lifting off the surface.

Ramen shops often use lard. Since lard is heavier than regular salad oil, the fried rice at ramen shops tends to be the moist type.

A sort of clumped-together feel.

That's right. You pack it into the ladle and then flip it over, and it falls out in a solid mound. That's the mainstream style at ramen shops.

At ramen shops, they use a ladle and serve it on the plate in that exact shape. But fried rice at high-end restaurants isn't molded. Is there a reason for that?

It's because they are aiming for that 'para-para' (loose/fluffy) style; when plating, they serve it in a light, airy way while shifting it. Doing that also improves the aroma.

It's also nice when they put a shrimp or something at the bottom of the ladle, press the rice on top, and flip it over so the shrimp is sitting on top.

I also love watching chefs plate the food (laughs). I find myself staring at them.

There are some skilled people who fill the ladle while shaking it. It's a real performance; I can't help but watch.

When I go out specifically to enjoy fried rice, the most disappointing thing is when someone who arrives later orders fried rice too, and the chef makes them both together. Making three portions at once is a bit tough (laughs). Two is about the limit for making it in the best possible state.

Is that the limit even with professional heat? When housewives tell me, 'I want to make four servings of fluffy fried rice all at once with home heat,' I have no choice but to answer, 'I think that's probably impossible.'

In those cases, you can actually make it faster by splitting it into two batches, and the result is better. If there's too much, it's hard to mix. Housewives might not have the strength, so if it's heavy, they give up and think, 'This is good enough.' If you only halfway cook it after mixing in the egg at the start, it actually sticks together and feels heavy.

Is fried rice ordered often at your restaurant, Komoda-san?

Yes, it's very popular.

Do you cook the rice specifically for fried rice in advance?

We prepare rice cooked a bit on the firm side. In the past, I went through a lot of trial and error, like freezing leftover rice and then thawing and breaking it up to see how to make it suitable for fried rice.

Since that removes a lot of moisture, I would sometimes add moisture back in while stir-frying, or stir-fry the egg first and then add warm rice—I tried all sorts of things.

The rice I find easiest to use for fried rice now is cooked with a one-to-one ratio of rice to water, with a little salad oil added.

Right from the start?

Yes. Rice steamed that way is the easiest to work with.

I'd like to try that.

Chinese restaurants always have a steamer going, so we don't have much resistance to the idea of steaming. We turn on the steamer when we arrive in the morning and leave it on until closing.

In China, the term "Yangzhou Fried Rice" is often used as a special designation. Essentially, it's a mixed fried rice with various ingredients. I've looked into why it's called "Yangzhou," but surprisingly, it's not clear. There are plenty of unreliable theories. For instance, that Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty had a favorite dish that was passed down to Yangzhou. However, there doesn't seem to be any clear historical documentation.

The most credible story is that an official who became the governor of Yangzhou in the 19th century loved fried rice and wrote the recipe in his collected works, which then became a sort of brand and spread. However, according to people from Yangzhou, they've never eaten such a thing locally (laughs). Usually, dishes with place names aren't actually found in those places; people in Yangzhou wouldn't go out of their way to call it "Yangzhou Fried Rice."

They wouldn't.

According to one theory, people from Hong Kong or Guangdong took a fried rice that already existed in that region and branded it as Yangzhou style. There's a good chance that mixed fried rice is originally Cantonese cuisine.

Yangzhou Fried Rice has become branded with the idea that you must include certain ingredients. I think that's a recent development.

According to the definition of Yangzhou Fried Rice, it must contain several ingredients like Chinese ham, sea cucumber, and peas. But it feels like you can put anything in it, and in fact, there are versions with nothing in them at all.

Recently, the city of Yangzhou tried to register "Yangzhou Fried Rice" as a cultural heritage as part of regional promotion, but it didn't work out in the end. Apparently, there was no such tradition in Yangzhou originally (laughs).

I didn't see much 'ankake' (starchy sauce) fried rice back when I was training, either.

That has also spread now under the name "Fujian Fried Rice." Again, people from Fujian have apparently never eaten it (laughs).

Hong Kong is the suspicious culprit for that one.

But that starchy sauce goes well with fluffy fried rice. It's not good if you put sauce on soggy fried rice, but it's a great match for fried rice that's almost on the dry side.

I think the history of ankake fried rice is quite recent. One theory is that Cantonese people put something like happosai (stir-fried seafood and vegetables) on top of fried rice.

There are almost no historical documents to verify the origins of foods. On the other hand, there are mountains of rumors, and once someone proposes a theory, it takes on a life of its own, making it difficult to master this through historical research.

Once something becomes popular in one place, it spreads incredibly fast. For example, if you go to a shop in Chengdu, Sichuan, and say, 'This dish is amazing,' the person there will say, 'I invented this dish.' Then you go to the next restaurant, the same dish comes out, and they say, 'I invented this dish.' It's like whoever says it first wins (laughs).

Perhaps they sought a kind of authority for Yangzhou Fried Rice by associating it with a city that has a refined cultural atmosphere like Yangzhou.

There are many types of fried rice now, but the combination of oil and egg is absolute. If you don't use oil, the egg won't puff up.

Is there such a thing as fried rice without oil?

No, because the egg wouldn't puff up and the aroma wouldn't come out. It depends on whether you use a light oil like refined vegetable oil or lard. Using lard definitely adds richness.

Japanese people may not have been a people who originally liked oily things, but things like tempura have been relatively widespread for a long time. So, I wonder why they never thought of stir-frying rice in oil.

Cooking methods like kinpira gobo, where you stir-fry and then simmer, seem to have existed even in the Edo period, so why were there no dishes that were just 'stir-fried'?

It is strange.

It seems like something you could make easily if you have rice and green onions, yet there was apparently nothing like fried rice in Edo-period Japan. Instead, there were many types of kayaku-gohan (mixed rice), but those don't use oil.

Japan has a strong image of takikomi-gohan (rice cooked with ingredients).

In my research, I was quite surprised to find that fried rice arrived in the Meiji era. The word "yakimeshi" (fried rice) appears in the Edo period, so I thought, "See, it did exist," but it turned out to refer to grilled rice balls (yaki-onigiri). It really seems it didn't exist in the Edo period.

The character for "cha" (炒) in chahan is read as "iru" in Japanese. "Iru" (parching/toasting) is a cooking method that doesn't use oil.

It's not that the concept of cooking with oil didn't exist in Japan, but so-called stir-fried dishes never emerged. Perhaps eating stir-fried food as-is was a bit too oily for Japanese people at the time.

But "deep-frying" did exist.

That's true. In Western Japan, fried rice is called "yakimeshi." In this case, "yaku" (to grill/fry) is used with exactly the same meaning as the Chinese "chao" (stir-fry). Why did "yaku," which originally meant a cooking method of roasting over an open flame like grilled fish, come to be used for "chao," which uses oil? Even a single point like this is endlessly fascinating.

I'm a chef, but I long for the memories of what I ate as a child, so I often recreate those old flavors. Like fried rice with "naruto" (fish cake) in it, or frying it well even if it gets some color.

Deliciousness and nostalgic flavors that remain in our memories are all mixed together in our hearts.

When you make fried rice, stir-fry it with lard, and add MSG, it feels nostalgic the moment you eat it. You think, "Ah, this is what I ate as a kid." I felt that we need to look at things that grab our memories like that with a bit of a cool head.

A clean fluororesin-coated frying pan at home is completely different from a wok at a ramen shop that has a towel wrapped tightly around the handle and layers of seasoning on the sides. I'm convinced that a great aroma definitely transfers to the fried rice from that.

Some people say that croquettes from a butcher shop are delicious because they use lard and fry them dozens of times, which gives them a great aroma.

In cooking, texture is important, of course, but aroma is also huge. At the very end of making fried rice, I add a little Shaoxing wine or soy sauce. I don't pour it onto the rice, but rather splash it into the space between the rice and the side of the wok. That way, it evaporates instantly and the aroma rises. When you mix it then, that aroma permeates the entire fried rice. It's more about getting the toasted aroma of the soy sauce in there rather than the saltiness of the soy sauce.

When the so-called amino-carbonyl reaction occurs, the number of chemical substances that generate aroma becomes enormous at that moment, and it apparently becomes suddenly complex. Humans seem to find that complexity delicious.

That's why everyone likes things like yakiniku sauce. It has so many different things in it.

If you eat while blindfolded and holding your nose, you end up having no idea what you're eating. It's interesting, isn't it? It's not just a matter of taste.

What we think is taste is actually often smell. The inside of the mouth is connected to the nose.

They say you never forget the flavors you experienced as a child. In that respect, Japanese people are generally conservative.

The taste of Mapo Tofu is the same. Authentic Sichuan Mapo Tofu, with its strong "ma" (numbing) flavor from Chinese peppercorns, didn't catch on easily in Japan. Even though you see it in ready-to-eat pouches now, the classic Mapo Tofu without that old-fashioned "ma" flavor still sells better.

That's true, as some people find the numbing sensation off-putting.

I think the flavor of Chinese cuisine for our generation was really shaped by the influence of Chen Kenmin.

If it weren't for Chen Kenmin, Mapo Tofu wouldn't have been introduced. So historically, it's only been about 60 years.

The history is actually surprisingly short.

Exactly. But the reason Mapo Tofu, which everyone knows now, could spread so widely in such a short time is because Chen Kenmin taught others how to make delicious Mapo Tofu without hiding anything, and those people reproduced it.

Chinese culture tends to be one of secrecy, but because he shared it properly, there is so much Mapo Tofu in Japan. I think people in Japan might eat it more than people in Sichuan Province nowadays.

In cooking, the act of "stir-frying" is the technique where the difference in skill shows the most. It's difficult because the finish changes completely depending on the frying time and the amount of oil. So, while the ingredients are simple, I think the primary entry point is fried rice. Tossing the wok is part of that too.

So it's like the foundation of a chef's technique.

If you can make fried rice delicious and beautiful, you can basically do anything else. If you're clumsy with fried rice, you won't be able to handle things like Qingjiao Rousi (pepper steak).

In the manga "Oishinbo," there's a scene where it says, "If you can't make fried rice, you're no good at anything else." Is that theory correct?

Yes, I think so.

This isn't something that Zhou Fude actually said, is it?

But Zhou Fude himself wrote quite a bit in his own books about how "fried rice is a way of life." Things like, "You must become a person who masters the heat."

What kind of basic practice do you do for the cooking technique of "stir-frying"?

We used to practice the motion of flipping the wok—making the food at the front go inside and rotate evenly—using salt. Once you can do that, next you roast sesame seeds.

When roasting sesame seeds, if you don't keep it uniform the whole time, they'll start popping and burning. If they start popping, you're told, "It's no longer usable."

You roast them slowly over low heat until they are golden brown. Also, because the temperature of the wok has risen, you have to keep tossing it for a while even after turning off the heat, or the residual heat will overcook them. That's how you train your wok technique before moving on to fried rice.

Is that with a two-handled wok?

It's a two-handled wok. At first, everyone's arms get exhausted immediately.

But by doing that, you learn the mechanics of how the wok flips with your body. That becomes the technique for rotating the ingredients evenly. Professionals actually put in a surprising amount of training before they even get to fried rice.

So various techniques converge into something simple.

One of the struggles of making fried rice at home was that home stoves don't emit fire from the center, so the middle doesn't get hot easily. In a wok, the oil pools in the center, so you want that part to be the hottest.

Considering that, there are now IH-compatible woks, and since IH heats the center properly, I feel like you might actually be able to do it once you get the right wok.

If you're making it on IH, first prepare warm rice, or if it's cold, microwave it without plastic wrap to let some moisture evaporate.

Prepare two eggs—one whole and one with just the yolk. Beat the yolk-only one and add salt, pepper, and a bit of soup stock. Using chicken granules, dashi, or even something like bouillon makes it easier to bring out richness.

Spread oil, put it in with the rice, and stir it around with four chopsticks. Once it becomes fluffy, take it out, fry the remaining egg white until it's slightly brown, then return the rice to the pan to give it the aroma of the egg white.

In my pursuit of fluffiness, I also eventually arrived at the method of beating only the yolk.

Egg whites have a lot of moisture, so with home heat levels, the temperature drops the moment the white goes in, making it very difficult to get it fluffy. I realized it works well with just the yolk, but then it lacks aroma. In the end, my final recipe used two yolks and a little bit of white, but I thought the idea of adding the white separately at the end was brilliant.

Did this obsession with fluffiness start in the 1990s?

Yes. Since the 90s, one factor is that Sasanishiki rice stopped being grown in Japan, and Koshihikari-type rice became the mainstream in distribution. It's very sticky. It might be harder to make it fluffy at home than it used to be.

Right now, Japanese rice is popular in Northeast China, so I imagine families in China using Japanese rice are struggling with their fried rice (laughs). They try to make it with their old instincts and go, "Wait, what?"

That's because people who used to steam their rice have started using rice cookers.

I get the feeling there aren't many Chinese people who are as thoroughly obsessed with fried rice as Mr. Tsuchiya.

The quality of the rice itself is definitely better in Japan.

It's not suited for fried rice, but if you can handle the stickiness well, it becomes delicious.

In the Meiji era, dry rice from China came in under the name "Nankin-mai," but the fact that it didn't catch on probably means it just wasn't tasty.

Indica rice doesn't spread at all in Japan. If fluffy is what you want, it seems like you could just make it with Indica rice in Japan, but the fact that they don't is interesting.

Japanese people have a unique sensibility where they cherish their own things while also sparing no effort to transform things that come from abroad into something even better.

Whisky is a perfect example. I don't think there's any other ethnic group so obsessed with foreign liquor-making. Even with ramen, only the Japanese would pour all their energy into making the soup like this. This might also be a culture unique to the Japanese.

It looks like "The Way of Men's Fried Rice" will be released in mainland China, so I'm wondering what kind of reaction it will get.

That's interesting.

They'll probably say something like, "Why are the Japanese struggling so much over something as simple as fried rice?" while laughing a bit (laughs).

I'd definitely like to have my Chinese friends read it and hear their reactions.

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time this magazine was published.