Fried rice is convenient and quick, and it's a great way to use up leftovers from a previous meal, making it a popular choice for many. How can we make fried rice both delicious and healthy? Let's take a look at the experts' tips.
First, the main ingredient for fried rice is leftover rice. Reheating it once leads to a loss of vitamins, especially vitamin B1, so its nutritional value is lower than that of freshly cooked rice.
Second, after being stored, the starch in the rice undergoes a degree of retrogradation, becoming harder in texture and slower to digest, which is not suitable for people with indigestion.
Third, during the stir-frying process, some oil must be added, which increases the calorie and fat content of the fried rice. If fried rice is still considered a staple food, it is not conducive to maintaining body weight.
Finally, rice is rarely eaten on its own; it's usually served with various dishes to ensure a variety of foods. However, when made into fried rice, it doesn't provide enough vegetables, which doesn't align with the principle of dietary diversity. However, whether a certain way of eating is healthy cannot be concluded so simply. In fact, as long as we apply some cooking techniques and nutritional wisdom, fried rice can still be incorporated into a healthy diet, contribute to dietary diversity, and even become part of the diet for people with diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension. To achieve this, just a few small tricks are needed:
1. Increase the diversity of ingredients. When making fried rice, in addition to adding eggs, you can also add many types of vegetables. For example, add fungi like shiitake mushrooms and oyster mushrooms; add stir-fry-tolerant vegetables like diced bamboo shoots, carrots, celery, and soybean sprouts; add ingredients like various types of dried tofu and diced boiled chicken breast; and even add a little pine nuts, chopped peanuts, or chopped walnuts. With this combination, the color, texture, and flavor of the fried rice become more varied and rich, and the nutritional balance is also improved.
2. Reduce the proportion of white rice. When cooking rice, you can add various grains and legumes, such as barley, millet, and oat rice. When making fried rice, you can also add fresh seed ingredients like sweet peas, edamame, and sweet corn kernels to complement it. People will be pleasantly surprised to find that coarse grains with a strong chewiness and high fiber content become more fragrant and delicious when made into fried rice.
3. Reduce the amount of oil used in fried rice. Rice is a starchy food that is prone to sticking to a regular pan when stir-fried. Using a non-stick pan can avoid using too much oil and the problem of sticking. Additionally, try to add oil only once when stir-frying. First, heat the oil to sauté the seasonings, then add diced vegetables, peas, and mushrooms, stir-frying them until semi-cooked. Next, add the rice and stir-fry together. Finally, beat the eggs and pour them into the pan, allowing them to coat the rice evenly to achieve a "golden wrapped in silver" effect with less oil and great flavor.
4. Control the amount of salt in fried rice. Since fried rice is considered a staple food, adding too much salt can lead to excessive sodium intake in a single meal. Therefore, it's advisable to use a variety of spices and seasonings when making fried rice. Besides the most common chopped green onions, you can also use small amounts of other spices like fennel, cinnamon powder, black pepper, and curry powder to enhance the aroma and compensate for the flavor loss from using less salt. Additionally, you can use chicken powder as an equal substitute for salt. Since the sodium content in chicken powder is about half that of salt, an equal substitution can reduce sodium intake while enhancing flavor, making it more easily accepted by people.
5. Pair fried rice with low-oil vegetables. Although the enriched ingredients in fried rice already include some vegetables, it's still far from the goal of 500 grams of vegetables per day or 200 grams per meal, and it contains almost no green leafy vegetables. Therefore, fried rice cannot be the entire meal; it should be paired with other vegetable dishes. At the same time, considering that fried rice already contains oil, the cooking of vegetables should be low-oil, such as blanching, oil-boiling, stir-frying, or serving them raw.
After adding a large variety of ingredients, fried rice becomes a simple way to increase dietary diversity and is also a good method to avoid food waste.
For example, if you've stewed a chicken at home, you've drunk the soup and eaten the wings and legs, leaving behind the white chicken breast, which is bland but a pity to throw away. Dice it into small pieces and add it to the fried rice. Combined with the aroma of chopped green onions and black pepper, your family will happily accept it. Another example is when the ratio of other ingredients to rice reaches 1:1 or even higher, you can turn one bowl of rice into two bowls of fried rice. This is especially helpful for diabetics and people trying to lose weight who need to control their carbohydrate intake. They can use other ingredients to add bulk, especially high-satiety ingredients like sweet peas, mushrooms, and bamboo shoots. This allows them to maintain a good feeling of fullness while reducing half of their refined staple food intake, which is very beneficial for weight control.
There are skills to making fried rice; it needs to be both healthy and delicious. The amounts of salt and oil must be controlled well, as long-term high-salt and high-oil intake can cause serious harm to the body. Friends who love fried rice are best off making it themselves.