This Is The Right Way To Cook Fried Rice, According To Roy Choi
Chef and restaurateur Roy Choi knows his way around a bowl of fried rice. The Korean-born chef was raised in Los Angeles, California and attended the Culinary Institute of America before going on to become the chef and co-owner of six restaurants, winning multiple awards, and writing his book L.A Son, which is part cookbook and part memoir, according to his taco truck Kogi's website.
When Choi was asked to consult for the film Chef by its creator and star Jon Favreau, the pair launched into a beautiful friendship and collaborative journey together. According to an interview Favreau gave with People, one of the best dishes Choi taught to Favreau is his recipe for kimchi fried rice. Favreau proclaimed the dish as quick and immensely satisfying, and even taught his 15-year-old son how to cook it as well.
Now the pair have their own show together on Netflix, The Chef Show, where they chat, cook, and generally have a good time. Uproxx notes Choi also has another show, Broken Bread, which airs on KCET and is a travel show of sorts where Choi explores the connection between food and social movements.
In The Chef Show, Choi and Favreau search to make food accessible and approachable to home cooks, so it was inevitable that they would include the fried rice episode as an homage to the dish Favreau and his family learned from Choi.
How Roy Choi makes the best fried rice
In his Uproxx interview, Roy Choi gives some background information and advice on making fried rice at home. The episode of The Chef Show that features the infamous kimchi fried rice is centered around a cook-off between Choi and celebrity chef David Chang. During the shoot, Favreau was not eating a lot of starch, so he created a version of the kimchi fried rice with cauliflower, while Choi made the classic preparation and Chang made his own fried rice recipe.
For perfect fried rice, Choi recommends starting with day-old rice, and then toasting it in a pan over medium-high heat to make it nice and crispy. He claims you need to treat the rice separate from the rest of the ingredients, and should wait to add your toasted rice into the mix until after you have all the other ingredients going. Choi states that it is okay to make mistakes, and that home cooks should try adding new ingredients they think will taste good without fear of doing the "wrong thing," as so much of cooking for chefs is really just trial and error.
If you would like to try Choi's Ketchup Fried Rice recipe from his book L.A. Son, you can find it reprinted with permission over on Food Republic.