Yangzhou fried rice

Ingredients

• Cooked rice — cold, from the day before600 g
• Eggs4
• Prawns150 g
• Cooked ham — finely diced100 g
• Peas100 g
• Carrot — finely diced1
• Spring onion3
• Shaoxing wine1 tbsp
• Light soy sauce1 tbsp
• Neutral oil3 tbsp
• Salt and white pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Separate two yolks and rub them through the cold rice with your hands until every grain is coated. Beat the remaining eggs separately.

   6 min

2. 2

   Heat the wok with a spoon of oil until it smokes, pour in the beaten eggs, let them set and break them into pieces. Set them aside.

   2 min

3. 3

   Fry the prawns for ninety seconds, add the ham, carrot and peas and cook a minute more. Add them to the eggs.

   3 min

4. 4

   Add the rest of the oil, tip in the rice and fry three minutes at full heat, tossing constantly. The grains should be jumping in the wok, not sitting in it.

   3 min

5. 5

   Return everything to the wok, pour the wine down the side and add the soy, season and toss for thirty seconds more. Scatter over the spring onion.

   2 min

About the dish

The trick to golden rice is coating the grains in yolk before frying. The film sets instantly, the grains do not clump, and you get what China calls gold embracing silver.

The rice has to be yesterday's and cold. Fresh rice holds too much water: it turns to porridge however much you toss it.

The wok must be smoking before anything goes in. That heat is what produces wok hei, the faintly smoky note that never appears in a warm pan.

Worth knowing

• — The wine goes down the hot side of the wok rather than into the middle. It flashes off and leaves the aroma without cooling the rice.
• — More than two portions at once will not work in a home pan: the temperature drops and the rice starts to steam.
• — The soy goes in at the very end and sparingly. Its job is aroma rather than colour: Yangzhou rice should stay pale gold.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

540 kcal

Protein

26 g

Fat

18 g

Carbs

68 g

More from China

• Mapo tofu — Tofu in a hot doubanjiang sauce with Sichuan pepper, which numbs rather than burns.
• Gong bao chicken — Diced chicken with peanuts and dried chillies in a sauce where the vinegar matters more than the sugar.
• Jiaozi dumplings — Pork and cabbage dumplings, fried and then steamed in the same covered pan.