Americanized Chinese cuisine

Rice-a staple food for most of the world

One of our favorite staple dinners is fried rice. For the longest time I thought there was a special, magical recipe only to find out that fried rice is a leftover dish. To add to the commonality, it’s disputed that a famous Chinese chef, Tao Feng, initiated fried rice but rather peasants started the trend, using leftover rice with other leftover ingredients to use up food rather than throw it out. Anyway, it’s an old stand-by at our house and we always make a double batch. Here’s our recipe but feel free to add or subtract from the ingredients.

Fried Rice Wilson Style

8 strips of bacon (or roughly ½ pound)

½ cup chopped green onions and tops

½ cup diced colored pepper (red, yellow, orange-just not green-green is too bitter for the recipe and detracts from the other flavors)

1/3 cup frozen green peas, thawed

1 egg, beaten

about 4 cups cold cooked rice

1 ½ to 2 tbsp soy sauce

Cook bacon until crisp and remove to drain but reserve grease in fry pan. Add green onions and pepper and stir fry for a few minutes in bacon grease. Add peas and stir fry for another minute. Move mixture to one half of the pan and scramble the egg on the empty half-then mix together when egg is barely set. Gently stir in rice, crumbled cook bacon and then soy sauce. Cook and stir gently until mixture is heated thoroughly. Serve immediately.