Fried rice falls into the “Grandma food” category — aka dishes that came from my Grandma that you have no hope of ever getting an actual, exact written recipe. It’s not a new phenomenon – every family seems to have a dish that you can’t pinpoint why it comes out so wonderfully when your [INSERT RELATIVE HERE] makes it, yet when you try it’s just off.
On this fried rice, the best we ever got was a list of ingredients — a little onion, bacon or ham, rice, green pepper, water chestnut, egg. My grandma should have been a CIA agent because most of that is a misdirect. Never in my life do I remember having green pepper in it…and certainly never ham – always bacon. Onion – usually green, not yellow.
Over the last few years I’ve come up with a version that very nearly matches my Gram’s. But I’m just as guilty on the recipe. I haven’t written it down, I don’t measure the shoyu and you just have to go with what looks right based on the amount of rice (preferably day old) you have. So here’s the ingredient list:
Grandma’s Fried Rice
3-5 strips of bacon, sliced in 1/4 in. pieces and rendered
rice
2-3 eggs lightly beaten
2-3 green onions sliced on the bias w/ some of the dark green part
frozen peas, rinsed
shoyu
